


The Time of My Life

by SapphicScholar



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 80s setting, Already finished, Dirty Dancing AU, F/F, Sanvers - Freeform, coming out arc, daily updates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-19 07:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16530281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphicScholar/pseuds/SapphicScholar
Summary: Did you say you wanted a Sanvers Dirty Dancing AU set in the late 80s? Let’s pretend we said yes, hop back in time to when the weather was warm and summer love was in the air, and all get (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life stuck in our heads for days.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missdancer208](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missdancer208/gifts).



> AN: To a wonderful human being who’s been more supportive than she might know over the past year, happy birthday and enjoy! I figure I always get a little sad after my birthday ends, so here's a little something that will last for a full week :)
> 
> And huge thanks to both you and @whatdoIdowiththisthing for your help in the earlier stages of writing what became chapters 3 and 4 as I tried to figure out what dancing looked like when it wasn’t my own clumsy flailing (but also, if it still sounds like it was written by someone who knows nothing about dance beyond her own clumsy failing, they are in no way responsible…) 
> 
> Finally, note that this AU is set in late 80s and reflects the American politics of the time, so this is a heads up on a few moments of homophobia (internalized and external) throughout, though it's certainly not the main focus of the story

“What are you most excited about? Do you think we’ll meet a lot of new people? Do you think I should have packed more than the two bathing suits?” Kara rambled on as Alex narrowed her eyes and tried to focus on the words swimming on the page in front of her, letting out a vague noise every so often to pretend like she was listening.

Eliza shifted in the front seat, turning around to face them. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, dear.”

“It’s just, we’ve never gone away for this long before. What if I need something from back home?”

Alex fished her headphones and her Discman out of her bag, managing to get her music playing before a sharp reprimand from Eliza left her shrugging them off again.

“This is a family vacation, Alexandra. We’re trying to be present.”

Alex rolled her eyes as she shoved everything back into her bag, muttering under her breath there being about better uses of her time and complaining about family decisions made without consulting the entire family.

“Come on, Alex.” Jeremiah glanced back at her through the rearview mirror. “I know it’s not surfing, but there are tons of other activities there. I’m sure you’ll find something fun.”

“Maybe…”

“And there will be plenty of people your age, maybe you’ll even find some of your Stanford classmates there.”

“Kay.”

Eventually they arrived at Kellerman’s Lakeside Retreat, some place up the coast that Alex was fairly certain they were only at because her dad’s boss had made some offhand remark about it, and apparently the way to get a promotion was to stand out in the hot sun and hit golf balls together, as if that made either of them better scientists. She wasn’t sure why her mom had gone along with it, but then again, she didn’t understand most of her mom’s decisions or her arbitrary rules—like when it was and was not appropriate to listen to music on the Discman she’d purchased with her own money from tutoring.

“Welcome!” A large man in a suit that seemed too hot for the sunny day greeted them, waving both hands at once. With a snap of his fingers, two young men materialized and began unloading the trunk the moment Jeremiah popped it open. Alex didn’t pay attention to her dad’s conversation with the man, instead looking around at the throngs of people. They all seemed to know each other, the kids shrieking and running around the grassy lawn, while the dads laughed too loudly and slapped each other on the shoulder and the moms clumped around under the umbrellas with glasses of chilled rosé in their hands. Perhaps she could sneak a glass or two of that…

One of the boys unloading the car bumped into Alex while she wandered distractedly towards the back of the sedan, her thoughts still swirling with half-baked plans for how she might sneak into the kitchens.

“Shoot! I’m so, so sorry.” He jumped back, ducking his head down.

“You’re fine,” Alex muttered, watching as he swayed under the heavy weight of one of the suitcases. “Here, let me help you.”

“You don’t—that’s not your job. You’re here to, you know”—he gestured around them—“enjoy yourself and relax and stuff.”

Alex shrugged. “Not really my thing.”

“What? Not a fan of relaxing?” He glanced up to find Alex pursing her lips and glaring. “Sorry, sorry. Wrong audience for a joke.”

“No, sorry,” Alex huffed, pushing her hair back and out of her eyes. “This…I’d rather be home with a surfboard and my physics textbooks getting a head start on reading for next year.”

“Oh! You study science too?”

“Yeah.” Alex returned her attention to the boy, considering him in a new light. “Do you?”

He nodded eagerly, traipsing over to the cart to deposit one of the bags while Alex hefted another one up on top of it. “I’m studying computer science at MIT.” He extended his hand. “Winn. Winn Schott.”

“Alex Danvers. I’m studying bioengineering at Stanford.”

“Oh very cool!”

“Winn!” The large man from before snapped his fingers, and Winn shuffled backwards, putting a few feet of distance between himself and the guests. “Get your job done.”

“Yes, sir.” He turned back to Alex. “Sorry, I, uh, really need to keep this job. You know, tuition and all that.”

“Right, right. Sorry.” Before Alex could offer to help carry the bags for Winn, her dad was motioning for her to join him. “Yeah?”

“Alex, meet Collin. He manages the retreat here.”

“Alexandra!” He extended a slightly pink hand, shaking hers with a bit too much force.

“Nice to meet you, sir.”

“I hear such wonderful things about you and your father from Joseph.” Alex smiled and nodded, figuring Joseph was probably her dad’s coworker, the reason they were stuck out here for a month. “I have someone I want you to meet too—I’ll find you tonight.”

“That sounds great,” Jeremiah answered for Alex when he noticed her tight-lipped grimace. The moment Collin had left, Jeremiah put an arm around Alex’s shoulders. “Try to enjoy yourself, hmm? Look at Kara. She’s already signing up for classes.”

Alex glanced over at Kara and rolled her eyes. Figured. No matter how much she’d come to like her new little sister over the years, there were certain things about her she’d never understand. Like her enjoyment of socialization and clubs and group activities and basically everything that this “vacation” was supposed to be about. And the pastels. Alex shuddered.

“Alex!” Kara’s voice dragged Alex out of her thoughts. “There’s a dance class down by the gazebo starting in five. Want to go?”

And the answer was no. A clear and resounding no. But Kara had those stupid big blue puppy dog eyes and the bright smile and the little pout when she thought Alex might say no, and somehow Alex found herself nodding and being dragged down the lawn. At the very least, it earned her an approving smile from her parents that she might be able to turn into a night away from them down the line.

“Kara, this is full of old people,” Alex whined, surreptitiously glancing around them.

But Kara merely shrugged, still smiling. “Then we should be the best ones here!”

As it turned out, they were not. Not by a long shot.

The instructor—some tiny woman with dark hair and tan skin and prominent dimples—walked them through the steps of the most basic salsa dance multiple times, but Alex found herself tripping over her feet no matter how many times she heard the same simple choreography repeated. And it wasn’t even like she was trying to fuck it up. She might not want to be there, but she hated failing at something even more than she hated participating. But somehow, whenever the woman began moving, one toned arm coming up into position and her other hand gesturing at her hips as they rolled and moved in time with the music, Alex found her focus slipping away.

By the time they partnered up, Alex was left with some sweaty middle-aged man who was almost as bad as she was, and she excused herself a few minutes before the class ended, ignoring Kara’s calls to wait up.

Of course, Kara found her soon enough, plopping down on the dock right next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

“C’mon. I know we didn’t talk as much while you were at school, but I’m still your sister.”

“It’s not…nothing’s wrong. I’m not mad at you.” That much was true. She might be bitter watching Kara interact with her mom sometimes, but she wasn’t angry.

“You haven’t even talked to me about how the spring semester went.”

No, Alex thought, because there wasn’t really a good way to say,  _Hey! I got drunk at a party and made out with a girl, and even though I don’t totally remember it, I think it meant something_. But she watched enough news to know that thinking harder about it all was a bad idea, to know that people were always on air yelling about “the homosexuals” and everything that came along with them. And besides, deep down she just knew her mom would never let her live it down. She wasn’t peppy enough, wasn’t pleasant enough, didn’t choose the school her mom thought would be the best choice, and now what? Now she was a lesbian too? No. It was better to ignore it. After all, it was probably the alcohol that made it seem like it mattered. Too many drinks in too little time under too much stress. A formula for disaster. Not that knowing it would lead to disaster kept her from making the same mistake over and over again…

“Alex?”

“Sorry, I don’t know. Long semester. Lots of work. You knew I was gonna be taking some of the big weed-out classes.”

“Yeah…they sound awful.”

“They were.” Alex let herself fall into the familiar routine of talking about classes and asking Kara about her own life. It was safe. Easy. Alex could play the protective, wise big sister role; she knew where she stood then, knew it was something that her parents approved of and her sister appreciated, and she could and would do it.

Eventually they trudged back to the cabins, finding the one they’d be staying in and unpacking all of their things in the room they would be sharing. While Kara focused on properly settling her clothes into the drawers, separating them out by type and smoothing them so they wouldn’t wrinkle, Alex kicked her duffel bag under the bed. “I’m gonna go walk around, okay?”

“You know we’re meeting for dinner in an hour, right?”

Alex took a minute to throw on a blazer. “There, now I’m all dressed.”

Kara chuckled and waved goodbye. “Just be on time, yeah? I don’t want to have to referee between you and Eliza on day one.”

“Yes, yes.”

For a while, Alex wandered around the grounds, looking at the different areas she’d seen designated for activities on the map. She paused at the sound of a loud voice, peering through an open window and finding Collin standing in front of a cluster of white-clad waitstaff. “Now remember, we’re trying to show the guests a good time, yes?” They all nodded. “And you—you’re my college boys, my Ivy Leaguers. I want you out there charming the daughters and their mothers, reminding them of why they come here each summer.” Alex tried not to gag.

She ducked a little lower at the sound of more people entering the room, peering up in time to catch sight of the tiny dance instructor from earlier cutting across the floor along with a group of other people Alex didn’t recognize.

“And you all stay away from them. You show them the dances, give them a private lesson if they pay for it, but you keep your hands to yourself, got it?” Collin waggled his finger at them like some sort of scolding patriarch.

One of the waiters stepped closer, thrusting his chest out as he sneered at the entertainment staff. “Think you can manage it?”

A tall, handsome man with dark skin stepped in front of the dance instructor, muscular arms folded over his chest. “I think we’ll be just fine, man. How about you worry about yourself?”

At the sound of people moving toward the door where Alex was crouched, Alex jumped off the porch, jogging quickly enough that she was already several yards away by the time the door swung open. Figuring she might as well go find her family for dinner then, Alex wandered back in the direction of the dining hall, hoping she’d be able to avoid creepy Collin for a while. 

Of course, that while lasted only until their salads were served.

“How is everything? Up to your expectations?”

Alex rolled her eyes and mimed a gagging motion at Kara, who covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“It’s great so far,” Jeremiah answered. “Our two girls were already up at one of the dance lessons.”

“Fabulous, just fabulous. And your waiter? He’s been good to you?”

“The best, sir,” the pompous boy from earlier interjected with what Alex guessed was supposed to be a charming smile.

“Ah, of course, Mike, my good boy.”

“And it’s been a pleasure getting to serve such lovely ladies.” Mike winked at the two of them, and Alex kicked Kara’s shin when she rewarded him with a smile and a dip of her head.

Once he refilled their glasses, Mike disappeared again, and Alex let out a sigh of relief, only to tense up once more when Collin dragged another boy over. “And this is who I wanted you to meet. Maxwell Lord, this is Dr. Danvers and his wife, also Dr. Danvers, and these are their daughters, Alexandra and Kara.”

“Pleasure to meet you all.”

Alex wondered if the crooked smile and tousled hair did it for most girls. She could maybe see the appeal, but it seemed more smarmy than seductive.

“Maxwell here is my nephew, and he’ll be helping me out this summer. He goes to school at _Harvard_ ”—Alex wondered how much effort it took to stretch a word out for that long—“though he’s going to be a scientist—following in his parents’ footsteps instead of mine, I suppose.”

Alex noticed the grimace on Maxwell’s face as he cleared his throat. “I think it’s what would honor their legacy.” She felt herself softening slightly.

“Maxwell will be at the after-dinner dance tonight. Hopefully he’ll see you there?”

As it turned out, hope had little to do with it; Collin brought both Maxwell and Mike over to their family the minute the music started playing, nudging them toward Alex and Kara with a jovial, “Enjoy yourselves!”

“Have fun, kids,” Jeremiah added as he held out a hand for Eliza, grinning as she spun into him.

“Kara?” Mike extended a hand towards her, and Alex was grateful to at least be spared that particular indignity.

“Alexandra?”

“Just Alex.”

“Then you should know, I’m just Max.”

Alex gave him a small smile as she dropped her hand into his, letting him lead her around the room in a slower dance. Eventually they settled into a conversation about school and their studies that Alex could tolerate as a subject, though she found him almost intolerably pompous, convinced as he was that he alone would be the man to change the world.

A flurry of movement and a ripple of excitement running through the crowd caught Alex’s attention, and she glanced over her shoulder to find the instructor and the tall man from earlier dancing, the guests around them having moved back to give them a large berth. Alex watched, entranced, as they moved together, their bodies working perfectly in sync as they held eye contact, their world narrowed to the two of them. Alex swallowed heavily as the woman’s leg lifted all the way up, revealing lengths of lean muscle and smooth skin. She never thought of herself as someone who wanted to know how to dance or even cared about it, but in that moment, she longed to be able to do as they did, to have the skill to move like that, stepping in and sweeping the woman up in her arms. Or no. No, she should want to be the one swept up in those strong arms. But watching as the man’s hand trailed up the instructor’s thigh, his other cupping at her bare back, Alex knew somewhere deep inside of her that she longed to take his place, not hers.

“They shouldn’t be doing that.”

“What?” Alex blinked slowly, forcing herself to return her attention to Max.

“They’re showing off, trying too hard.” He shook his head and let out a little _tsk_ of disapproval. “That’s not what sells lessons.”

“People seem to be clapping.” Alex gestured around them at what looked like a crowd of fairly impressed guests.

“Sure, they clap, but it’s too intimidating. They don’t see that and think they could do it, and if they don’t think they could do it, they won’t buy lessons.”

“Here I thought you weren’t invested in this side of the family business.” Alex arched an eyebrow at Max, who merely laughed.

“Doesn’t mean I won’t make sure it’s as profitable as it can be while I’m here.”

“Right.”

Eventually Max excused himself to talk to Collin, who forced the two dancers to break apart and partner up with some of the other guests. Alex didn’t know about everyone else, but her own interest in dancing plummeted then.

Catching sight of Max ambling back across the room, Alex ducked outside, letting the fresh air clear her head. She walked down to the lake, making a slow loop around it to pass the time. On her way back up toward the main grounds, she noticed Winn struggling under the weight of three large watermelons.

“Here, let me help!” Alex called out, jogging up the hill to him.

“No! No, no, no. Can’t do that.”

“What? Why?”

“Collin would kill me. Your parents would kill me.”

“For lifting something?”

“It’s for a staff-only party. Just the entertainers, no guests.”

Alex wondered if the dance instructor would make an appearance. “I won’t tell…”

Winn’s mouth twitched as he considered it, but when one of the watermelons rolled out of his arms, saved from smashing to the ground only by Alex’s quick reflexes, he nodded his head. “But you can’t say anything!”

“Got it.”

“Why are you out here anyway?”

Alex shrugged. “Bored at the dance.”

“Well, I can definitely promise you won’t get bored here.”

Alex’s curiosity was piqued, and she followed Winn up the stairs, listening as the sound of a rather different kind of music built the closer they got to the old wooden building. When they made it to the top of the stairs, Winn wiggled his eyebrows as he turned and bumped open the door with his hips.

Alex’s jaw dropped at the sight of all the dancers moving together. It looked like a college party if everyone had years and years of dance experience and enough lean muscle to look like a model.

“Pretty different from down there, huh?” Winn asked with a chuckle.

“Very.”

Hips rolled and bodies pressed together, and Alex thought it was all more sensual—hell, more like sex itself—than any of the naked fumbling she’d done with the college boyfriend she managed to keep for all of three months until they couldn’t stand another minute of trying to act like it was working. She suddenly felt rather dowdy in her oversized blazer and jeans. They wore tank tops tied high above their belly buttons and cut-off shorts and v-neck t-shirts with the sleeves rolled up, leaving dewy skin on full display.

She shuffled to the side of the room with Winn, simply watching for several songs until the two dancers from earlier entered, earning a chorus of whooping and cheering as they spun each other into the room before sliding back together with a kind of practiced ease.

Glancing over at Alex and finding her lips parted and eyes wide, Winn chuckled. “See you’ve got the same reaction as every woman around here.”

“Hmm?”

“Oh nothing. Just James Olsen and his six-pack abs and the big arms and the deep voice that drives the ladies crazy.”

James… Alex blinked, forcing her eyes off the small woman and up to the man—James, apparently. “Oh. Yeah, they, uh, they work so well together.”

“You’d never believe they weren’t a couple, huh?”

“Yeah…” Alex’s head snapped up to look at Winn once the meaning of the words sunk in. “Wait. They’re not?”

“No. With Maggie? Definitely not.” Winn snorted at a joke Alex didn’t understand, waving off the unspoken question. “Not for me to say.”

When the song ended, James and Maggie bowed, laughing and teasing the other dancers as they mingled with the crowds. Alex watched as Maggie’s gaze roamed around the room, soon landing on Winn and the newcomer. Alex barely had time to prepare herself before Maggie was in front of them, a finger pointed at Alex’s chest. “Why’s she here?”

“Hey, hey, she’s okay. She’s with me.”

Maggie’s eyes raked up and down Alex’s body, and Alex felt like she was being given an examination she definitely hadn’t prepared for. “She family?”

“Um, I don’t know. But I swear, she’s not gonna say anything. Right, Alex?”

“Right,” Alex managed, her voice higher-pitched than she remembered it being.

“Fine.”

It didn’t feel fine, though, and Maggie soon spun on her heel, leaving Alex behind. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, she’s just…she doesn’t love newcomers, that’s all.”

It felt like a half-truth at best, but Alex’s attention was soon claimed by the sight of Maggie and James partnering up once more as a new song began.

After a few bars, James caught Alex staring, his mouth quirking up into an easy smile. With a whisper to Maggie, James strode across the room, pointing at Alex, then motioning for her to join him.

“Me?” Alex squeaked.

“Come on, I see you watching. Don’t you want to try?”

Alex thought trying was probably the worst idea in the world, especially trying next to a bunch of people who were paid to be good at that kind of thing. But James was still grinning and standing there, and with a little shove from Winn, she stumbled forward into James’s waiting arms.

The first several bars of music involved a lot of awkward fumbling and standing still and stepping on toes. “Alright, how about we try something a little easier to start, yeah?”

“Okay.”

“Follow my lead, that’s all you’ve gotta do. Just trust me. Feel the way I’m moving.”

Alex tried, even closing her eyes in an attempt to stay a little more in time with the music and in touch with the movements of James’s body.

“That’s better.” His deep voice rumbled up his chest, and Alex could feel it vibrating between them, pressed as close as they were. “Now is there anything else you want to try?”

Alex looked around at all the different ways people were dancing. Some were on their own, breaking out Michael Jackson-inspired moves, while others paired up, bringing new life to old dance styles or adapting as they went. Alex’s eyes were drawn to Maggie, to the way she danced through the room, her movements fluid, rarely staying with a new partner for more than a few lines before gliding to the next one.

“ _Ohh._ ”

Alex’s attention snapped back to James at the knowing tone in his voice. “What?”

“Nothing, I just…here, give me a minute, okay? You keep dancing.”

Of course, without James there, Alex felt silly swaying by herself, and she could feel her cheeks burn when she caught sight of James whispering to Maggie, whose full attention was suddenly on her.

A few minutes later, Maggie strutted back over to Alex. “How’d you get Winn to bring you up here?”

“I carried a watermelon.” Alex closed her eyes and prayed for a sinkhole to force the ground to open wide and swallow her whole. Unfortunately it never came.

“A watermelon, huh?”

“Um, yes.”

One corner of Maggie’s mouth pulled up into a smirk. “Well, watermelon girl, show me what you got.”

“Oh, I, um, I’m not—this really isn’t my thing.”

“So you came to a dance party because…?”

Alex squirmed under the intensity of Maggie’s gaze. “I don’t know. I was just trying to get away from the main dance hall.”

“Guess that’s one redeeming point in your favor.” Alex’s heart swelled at the lukewarm praise. “I hear there’s another too…”

“I don’t know—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Maggie brushed off the question, letting her hands drift over to Alex’s hips. “Just follow my lead, yeah?”

Alex couldn’t quite manage a full inhale, let alone an answer.

“C’mon, loosen up a little.”

Alex gulped and forced herself to nod. Merely existing felt difficult, maybe even impossible, but when Maggie stepped forward, closing the distance between them and slotting their legs and hips together, Alex was fairly certain she had died.

“Roll your hips.” Maggie’s voice was low and a little gravelly, and it made Alex’s heart skip a beat. Her hips, however, did not cooperate. She wondered if she’d always been that stiff, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, but simply hadn’t noticed it because she’d never tried moving that way.

“I…I don’t…”

“Relax. Follow my lead. It’s easy if you trust your body.”

Alex wanted to point out that all of that was easier said than done, but Maggie’s thumbs were rubbing soft circles over her hipbones, and her body grew pliant beneath the touches.

“Better,” Maggie purred, her lips so close to Alex’s ear that Alex could feel the warm weight of her breath.

“I, uh, good teacher,” Alex managed, her chest heaving with the effort of gathering oxygen from her shallow inhales.

Maggie hummed, her hand moving to the center of Alex’s back as she dipped her. Maggie followed Alex forward, then dragged her back up in a slow, fluid movement. Alex knew none of it was her doing, but she felt herself relaxing anyway, like maybe she wasn’t quite so terrible as she feared.

“Hold onto my hips,” Maggie ordered, and seconds later she was folding herself backward, bending in ways Alex, with all her biology and anatomy classes, didn’t realize humans could bend. As she rolled back up, Alex’s eye were drawn down to what she knew must be impossibly strong abs.

“Ready to try something a little faster?”

Alex nodded because she didn’t know what else she was supposed to say. But then Maggie’s leg was hooking up over Alex’s hip, and Alex’s hand was on bare skin, and it was all so much—too much—as Maggie shimmied back, shaking her hair over her shoulders. When she lowered her leg back down to the ground, Alex thought she might have a moment to center herself again, but then Maggie’s hands were on her ass as she drew them together, Maggie’s smile playful, her lips dipping to Alex’s neck and pressing what felt like searing kisses to heated skin.

Alex’s heart thundered in her chest, and the room felt much too small, the bodies around her too close and the walls shrinking in on them. “I—I should—”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Maggie murmured, pulling back to meet Alex’s gaze, her expression suddenly serious. “Down there it might not be, but up here you can be gay. No one’s judging, alright?”

“I—I’m not—that’s not me.”

Maggie’s gaze hardened as she stepped away. Alex could see a muscle twitch as she clenched her jaw tighter. “I think you should go.”

“No! I mean, I’m not gonna, you know, say anything.”

“What? Because it’s some dirty secret I should have to hide?”

James stepped over then. “Something wrong?”

“She’s just leaving.”

Alex ducked her head. “Yeah, I, uh, I’m going.”

She took the long way back to the cabin, finding her parents sitting up and waiting for her when she returned.

“Where have you been, Alexandra? We were worried sick.”

“I just went for a walk…I wanted to explore, that’s all.”

Jeremiah sighed, clapping a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I know that you’ve been away at college, and you probably feel like you’re more independent now, but you need to tell someone if you’re going to wander off like that again. We were worried.”

“Sorry,” Alex muttered. “Won’t happen again.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the absolute sweetest comments on the first chapter - they seriously made my week <3 I've got a very recently adopted 5-month old puppy running around my house and chewing on everything he can find, so I may not get to comment back right away, but know that I read them all and absolutely loved hearing your thoughts!! I hope you enjoy today's slightly shorter chapter, and feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments! I'll be reading them in between policing puppy playtime

The next morning, Alex tried to force thoughts of the night before out of her mind by throwing herself into the family activities with a level of enthusiasm that nearly matched Kara’s. Or came close to matching Kara’s on one of her bad days. It was something. An effort was made. Over breakfast, she let Kara pull out a copy of the day’s course schedule and make suggestions about their activities, only vetoing one option—a dance class taught by Maggie—but agreeing to or at least shrugging at all the others, which is how she found herself at a crafting workshop, distractedly jabbing a needle through some circle that she was fairly certain was meant to turn into something at the end of it. Hers would not; she already knew that.

“What were you doing last night?” Kara whispered. “Did you leave with Max?”

“What? Eww, no!” Alex crinkled her nose in disgust, shuddering at the thought.

“He’s not that bad, Alex. It’s been months since you and Brandon broke up. Unless…is there someone new you haven’t told me about yet?”

“Nope!” _Jessica. And Maggie._ “No one at all. Just, you know, enjoying singledom.” _Because the prospect of dating men is terrible._ “I have to focus on my studies anyway.” _Because if I let my mind drift to the other possibility for even a moment, I know I’ll never stop thinking about it, and it could ruin everything I’ve worked so hard to build._

“You could always have a summer fling…”

Alex’s mind drifted to Maggie, to the feel of Maggie’s hips grinding against her own, to the press of Maggie’s lips on her neck. “Yeah, I, um, it’s fine.”

“Come on, it could be fun. We could double date!”

Alex jerked her head up. “You’re seeing someone?”

Glancing around, Kara lowered her voice. “Well, not officially yet, but Mike asked me to meet him tonight.”

“Oh…are you really sure about him, Kara?”

“What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t he seem kind of…skeevy to you?”

“He didn’t do anything wrong, Alex. Just because you don’t like Max for some reason.”

“No! That’s not it at all. I”—Alex shook her head—“never mind. Just, be safe, okay?”

“I’m not the one who stayed out all night.”

Alex rolled her eyes, letting her gaze roam around the surrounding area once it became clear that Kara was done talking to her for the moment. It wasn’t as though she cared enough to focus on her unstarted embroidery.

She didn’t realize she let out a little noise when she spotted Maggie, but suddenly Kara was talking to her again.

“What is it?”

“Oh, um, you know the dance instructor from yesterday?”

“Maggie?”

“Yeah. She’s, uh, right up there.”

“We should go say hi! I want to tell her how great her class was, make sure she knows I’ll be back.”

“No!” But Kara was already up, excusing herself from the session and walking up the hill, leaving Alex to catch up. “Kara, really it’s—”

“Hi, Maggie!” Kara called out, waving enthusiastically.

Maggie glanced up, giving Kara an indulgent smile before catching sight of Alex.

“I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be in dance class today. This one”—Kara gestured at Alex and let out a little laugh—“decided no more dancing for her for the day.” Alex gritted her teeth and elbowed Kara hard in the ribs, though it did little to stop her. “But I’ll definitely be back. You’re such an amazing dancer and a really great teacher.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Alex’s cheeks flamed red at the pointed glare.

“And, um, is it true? Did you really dance in New York City?”

Maggie dipped her head. “I did.”

“That’s so cool!” Kara gushed. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” And then, with a wave, Kara was off.

“You should probably hurry along too. Wouldn’t want anyone to see you with me.”

Alex rubbed her hand up and down her bare arm. “I—it’s not—that’s not it.”

“Whatever you say, _guest_.”

It was such an innocuous word that the menace behind it startled Alex, and she fumbled around for something to say that might ease the tension. “You—you really are a good dancer.”

Maggie barely looked up. “Thanks.”

“It’s pretty cool that you spent time up in New York. I, uh, I envy you. I haven’t really made it far from home.”

That earned Alex a bit of Maggie’s attention in the form of a hard glare. “My parents kicked me out at 14, and I’ve been dancing ever since to pay the bills.”

“Oh, I, um—”

“Save it.” Maggie stormed off then, and Alex felt herself floundering yet again but unsure of how to fix anything.

\---

The next night, Alex found herself once more out with Max against her best wishes. But Collin had appeared, and her father had shaken Max’s hand, and her mother had smiled at her, and somehow all of that had turned into a midnight stroll around the property with Max because apparently missing curfew was allowed when she was with a boy.

During their walk, Max droned on and on about what a catch he was, while Alex’s thoughts wandered to Maggie. She wondered how the woman was doing. At the post-dinner dance out on the gazebo, she’d heard Collin yelling at James about Maggie’s disappearance and hoped she hadn’t been the reason for it.

“Isn’t that right?”

“Hmm? Uh, yeah,” Alex nodded, assuming that no matter what it was, it would be easier to simply agree than to pick a fight with a man convinced his intelligence rivaled God’s.

She tried not to cringe as Max’s hand found hers, gripping it a little too tightly. Alex wondered what it would be like to hold Maggie’s hand on a date. While they were dancing, she’d noticed how strong and soft they were, but then they had been in constant motion, always flicking out or gesturing to some move or curling up Alex’s sides, leaving trails of crackling, pleasurable fire in their wake. The idea of a leisurely stroll, their fingers twined together…it seemed different, and Alex couldn’t stop her thoughts from returning to it again and again.

After what felt like hours of listening to Max brag, Alex feigned a yawn. “I think it might be getting late.”

Consulting his watch, Max’s eyes widened. “You’re right.”

First and last time he’d ever admit that, Alex thought.

“What do you say to a bite to eat, then I’ll get you home safely?”

“Um, I guess.”

She tried to repress the shudder that ran through her as Max wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in closer. Blessedly the walk to the kitchen was only a few minutes long, and once they got inside, Max let her roam freely as he called out all the possibilities “Uncle Collin” kept in stock for him. As Alex meandered past industrial-sized refrigerators and large stoves with more burners than she’d ever know what to do with, she heard a sniffle.

With a hum at whatever Max’s latest statement had been, Alex rounded the corner, finding Maggie crouched low on the ground, hiding behind one of the work stations, a bag of frozen food clutched in her hands. The look in her eyes was terror mixed with the same kind of strong-jawed defiance she’d seen that first night at the staff party, and Alex backed away slowly.

“Actually, you know what, Max?” Alex called out. “I’m not that hungry, and I really should get back to check on Kara, find out how her date went.”

“Are you sure? I had Collin import a few French dishes that I’m sure a fine palate like your own would appreciate.”

“I’m really okay. But thank you,” she forced herself to add, hoping it would stroke his ego enough to keep his feet moving out of the kitchen and far away from Maggie.

The moment she and Max parted ways, Alex bolted toward the staff-only cabins where she’d accompanied Winn to the party only two days earlier.

James answered the frantic knocking, glaring and crossing his arms over his chest when he saw who was there. “What do you need?”

“Maggie—I don’t know what’s wrong, but she’s crying, and she looked like she might have been hurt.”

In an instant, James’s demeanor transformed. “What’s wrong? Where is she?”

“Down in the kitchens.”

James took off without waiting for Alex, though she ran to keep up with him, arriving a few moments behind him slightly sweaty and out of breath. Part of Alex was surprised to find Maggie still there, though when she noticed the assortment of frozen food bags being used as makeshift icepacks, it began to make more sense.

“What happened?” James asked, his voice low as he dropped to the floor.

Maggie merely glared at Alex, her mouth a thin line.

“Look, I know…” James trailed off, shaking his head. “She came and got me, okay? She was worried.”

“Don’t worry. Go back to your fancy date and your rich family and let us handle our own shit.”

“I…you’re hurt. I don’t want to leave if you need help.”

“What are you gonna do to fix it? Stand there and watch and stammer on about offering to help until it might inconvenience you?”

Alex swallowed heavily, her jaw clenching. “I didn’t…I’ve volunteered as an EMT. I thought maybe I could, I don’t know, help. If you need it.”

“I don’t want it,” Maggie spat back, even as James placed a calming hand on her shoulder.

“It might be good to have someone look at these,” James murmured, his words clearly for Maggie alone, even though their deep rumble carried easily over to Alex.

Maggie’s silence was as close as Alex got to any kind of agreement, so she inched forward, finally coming to rest in front of Maggie. Her lip was cut and swollen, and both of her wrists were bruised. Scrapes and bruises littered her upper body, but nothing seemed broken, and Alex washed out any cuts where skin had been broken.

“What, uh, what happened?”

Maggie’s lip curled back as she sneered, “Nothing that concerns you.”

“Look, I’m trying to help. I don’t want this to happen again, and if you tell me, maybe we can find a solution or something.”

“You don’t know shit about my problems, alright?”

“Fine.” Alex shook her head. “You know Collin noticed that you weren’t here tonight.”

Maggie’s head popped up at that.

“Yeah. He was yelling at James, bitching to Max, the whole works, which makes me think your disappearance wasn’t planned, and now you come back looking like you just got beat up pretty badly. I’m gonna want to know what happened.”

“Demonstration,” Maggie grunted. “Some counter-protesters weren’t too happy with us.”

“Should we call the cops? I mean, no one should be allowed to get away with this.”

Maggie let out a derisive snort of laughter as she held up her hands, brandishing the thin bands of purpling bruises around her wrists. “Who the fuck do you think gave me these ones?”

“What…what were you doing?”

“She drove down to San Francisco for an ACT UP protest,” James answered for her. “She’s out with them for something or other whenever we have a free day.”

Maggie glared at Alex as if daring her to say something about it. Alex kept quiet.

“We should get you back to your room before someone finds you,” James said, extending an arm and helping Maggie get off the ground. “I told them you were sick—24-hour bug or something.”

“Thanks.”

Alex followed them back to the staff cabins, carrying a few bags of frozen food to try to preempt the worst of the swelling. During their walk, she caught a few words of Maggie and James’s whispered conversation—“zipties,” “still not a goddam word of acknowledgment from dear Mr. President,” “brought the big fucking vans and everything,” “250 dollars, who has that kind of money?”

When they got into Maggie’s room, Alex brought over the bags, instructing Maggie to rotate them between the worst of the bruises until they thawed. “You’ll still have bruises, but hopefully you’ve got some concealer so no one can tell tomorrow.”

“Yeah, like that’s the worst of my fucking problems.” Maggie shook her head, looking up at James like, can you believe this kid?

“I’m just saying, if Collin thought you were sick, he might get a little suspicious if you show up covered in bruises tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well, it won’t matter anyway.”

James’ brow furrowed in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t pay the fines they hit us with, and if you can’t pay, you know what happens.”

“Is that the 250 you were talking about?” Alex received matching glares in return. “I mean, maybe you could ask for an advance on your salary, or—”

“Go back to your cabin,” Maggie sighed, “and stop talking about things you don’t understand.”

Alex gritted her teeth together but forced herself not to snap, knowing she’d already made things worse twice. Somehow three times seemed like the charm that would get her thrown out of the staff cabins for good.

On her way across the grounds, Alex stopped at the lake, sitting cross-legged on the dock and staring out at the moon’s reflection shimmering and rippling along the water. She wondered what it would be like to be out there with Maggie, protesting and demonstrating and getting arrested. She’d seen them on the news before, of course, but she’d never had any inclination to join in. Knowing Maggie was one of them, though, that seemed to change things, put a face to the people she’d heard newscasters and family friends dismissing as “disruptive” and “unruly.”

When she got back to the cabin, she found a note waiting for her.

_Hope you had fun with Max! We went to bed, but there’s a box from dessert in the fridge if you’re hungry._

_Love,  
Mom and Dad_

She wondered if they would have been so understanding and supportive if her date was with a Maggie instead of a Max. She doubted it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for the wonderful comments! Chapter's going up a little early today, since the pup and I are taking our first trip out to a fenced in park to see how he does with some off-leash playing. Hope you enjoy!!

After a morning spent sunbathing down by the lake with Kara, who somehow managed never to burn despite the blonde hair and fair skin, Alex sent Kara off to Maggie’s dance class alone, resolving to find her dad. Trying to think of where he might be, she finally ended up at the golf course. She spotted him down on the putting green looking a little miserable, though he forced himself to smile each time his boss strolled by.

“Dad,” Alex called out, waving him over.

“Alex, what’s going on? Did you want to take a turn learning to golf?”

Crinkling her nose in disgust, Alex shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

Jeremiah chuckled. “There are…better things to be doing, that’s for sure.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“Oh, Alex.” A hand found its way to Alex’s shoulder. “When you get older, you’ll understand that it’s not always your choice.”

The frustration that had been simmering just beneath the surface threatened to boil over. Maybe she wasn’t as old as her parents, and she didn’t have the life experience of living alone in New York City for years, but dammit, she wasn’t some dumb kid with no idea about the world.

“If not golf lessons, what do you need?”

Forcing herself to breathe deeply, Alex let her heart rate slow. “I wanted to see if I could borrow some money.”

“Oh?”

“I, um, I need to borrow $200.” She figured she still had $50 in cash in her wallet from tutoring; it was probably better to give her dad the lowest possible number.

“Are you in trouble?”

“No.” Alex shook her head. It was true; Maggie was the one in trouble. “No trouble at all.”

Jeremiah arched an eyebrow at Alex. “Then why do you need all that money? Everything here is paid for, except the private lessons.”

“I, um, I actually wanted to do the private lessons.”

“Really? That’s news to me.”

“I just…I’m not very good, so the group classes aren’t working out. I thought…maybe Mom would be happy if I learned how to dance.” They both seemed to sense it was scrambling for anything to make him say yes, but he relented anyway.

“Is it for lessons with that James fellow? Is that why you haven’t been all that enthusiastic about Max?”

Alex’s cheeks flushed a faint shade of pink as she thought back to the only time she’d really tried to dance with James and everything it had led to.

Jeremiah’s mouth curved up into a knowing smile, and he shook his head. “You know, I hear from Collin that Max is destined for some pretty great things.”

“I don’t—”

“Ah”—Jeremiah held up his hand—“let me finish first.” Alex nodded, fighting the urge to point out that Max might be smart—not that she had any proof other than his word—but he was also a pompous asshole and very much not her type. So far from her type. “I was saying that I get it. Hell, your mom took a chance on me, some struggling grad student without a guaranteed job at the end of the tunnel, and look where it got us.” With a smile, he leaned over and threw an arm around Alex’s shoulders, squeezing her tightly. “A nice home and good jobs and two lovely daughters.”

Alex cleared her throat. “Right, right.”

“I’ll get you the money after I finish my golf practice, okay?”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Better than hearing you were getting into some kind of trouble!”

“Right…of course.”

\---

That night, Alex ran up the stairs to the cabin that had been haunting her dreams, squeezing through the door and maneuvering her way through warm bodies in the low light until she found Maggie, her head resting on James’s chest as they swayed together, talking in low murmurs.

“What are you doing here?” Winn hissed as he tried to grab Alex and drag her back outside, but she pushed him off.

Standing behind Maggie, Alex cleared her throat, but it got no response, so she leaned over and tapped Maggie on the shoulder that hadn’t been bruised.

Two sets of eyes were suddenly on her, and her heart seemed intent on battering against her chest as if she’d just run a marathon.

“I, um, I got you the money. For the fine.” Alex rocked up onto her toes than back onto her heels, pushing the wad of cash forward.

James’s eyebrows shot up as he looked at Alex. “Really? All 250 of it?”

Alex nodded, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. There it was, some way she could be useful.

“I’m sure it was real hard to go cry to your daddy and ask for money.”

Alex swallowed hard as James nudged Maggie, telling her to take the cash.

“I can’t.” Maggie shoved the roll of bills back into Alex’s hands.

“No, Maggie, it’s a good thing,” Winn insisted, stepping up and pushing the money back towards her.

“It doesn’t matter.”

James cleared his throat, pulling Maggie closer to him. “She, uh, she has to show up in court the day we’re supposed to go perform at another hotel.”

“Oh. I mean, isn’t this your main job?”

Maggie stepped forward then, and Alex swore her heart stopped its battering ram act only to jump up into her throat. “Some of us don’t get to pick and choose jobs based on whether we want them. And if you miss one gig, you’re fucked for the rest of the year ’cause they won’t book you again.”

“No, I just, that’s not what I meant.” Alex groaned, wondering why she could manage to say all the right things in her classes and all the wrong things in front of Maggie. “Is there someone else who could, I don’t know, cover for you?”

With a derisive snort, Maggie shook her head. “You really don’t get it, do you? We’re all working. No one’s sitting around with hours and hours of free time except you, and unless you’re about to step up, stop trying to act like you can fix things with these magical solutions you think we’re all too stupid to have come up with ourselves.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

Winn looked back and forth between Maggie and Alex. “What if Alex did?”

“Who?”

Alex raised her hand, realizing that of all the things she’d done with Maggie, giving her name hadn’t been one of them.

James’s forehead scrunched up in confusion. “What if Alex did what?”

“Filled in for Maggie.”

Maggie scoffed, looking Alex up and down. “I was making a joke.”

James shrugged. “It might work.”

“Are you kidding me?” Maggie turned to James, her eyebrows arched high and her expression incredulous.

“It’s one night. It doesn’t have to be our most technically challenging routine—just enough to make sure they don’t cancel the rest of the season.”

“She can’t do it. She can’t learn that much in a week.”

Alex crossed her arms defiantly over her chest, her stance widening. A voice in the back of her head screamed out that Maggie was right, she absolutely could not. “I could. If it would help.”

Maggie mirrored Alex’s posture and glared at James. “Fine. Have fun teaching her.” Without a second look back, Maggie stalked off into the crowd.

“You sure about this?” James asked Alex, his voice softer.

 _No_ , Alex thought. There were about a hundred other things she’d rather do. “Yeah. Plus, um, I did have to get some of the money from my dad and told him it was for private dance lessons.”

“Some?”

Alex shrugged. “I have a job, still had some cash from that.”

“Meet me in the staff cabins tomorrow after my morning lessons, okay?”

Alex nodded, then let herself be walked back to the door by Winn. “You’re gonna be okay,” he assured her.

“How do you know?”

“James is a good teacher. Maggie is too.”

“Not like she’ll come anywhere near me.”

Winn sighed, trudging down the steps with Alex. “Look, I…it’s not easy for her, alright?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Maybe.” A humid breeze blew through, ruffling Winn’s hair, and he paused, one hand on the makeshift railing. “She’s gone a long time without much help from anyone else. And you…she thought you were different. Or, I guess, no, that’s not it at all. She thought you had something in common. And you don’t. And that—it’s fine, ya know? But that feeling, like someone’s just using you for the thrill of it? It doesn’t leave quickly.”

“And if…if that wasn’t what I was doing?” Alex’s heart thundered in her chest, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She had no idea why she was telling Winn any of this, but she knew if she didn’t say something, it was going to eat at her until she did something much dumber than talk to someone.

“C’mon.”

“What?”

“Come with me.”

Winn nudged Alex’s shoulder, and, figuring she had nothing better to do, Alex let herself be led back down to the dock, which was apparently going to be where she had all of her midnight moments.

“Why am I here?”

“Thought you could use a place to sit and think. Maybe talk.”

“I’ve already done a lot of thinking.”

Winn hummed in understanding. “You should tell Maggie.”

“What?”

“If it’s not some…I don’t know, curious rich kid on vacation kind of deal, you should tell her.”

“Tell her what?” The crack in Alex’s voice gave her away.

“That first night, she asked if you were family.” Alex closed her eyes, thinking back to the question she hadn’t understood. “She really believes that. Maybe been hurt a few too many times to let her guard down easily, but she’s good people.”

Alex nodded slowly. She was grateful when Winn didn’t force conversation, simply sitting beside her while she looked out over the lake. At one point, he disappeared, coming back with a few rocks that were terrible for skipping but at least gave Alex something to do with her hands other than pick at her nails.

“I should probably get you back. It’s getting late.”

“I’m sure my parents think I’m out gallivanting with Max.”

“Mm, and they’re okay with that?”

Alex shrugged. “Seem to be.”

“And you’re worried that…?”

“Yeah.”

“Got it.”

\---

Kara sucked a bit of jelly off of her thumb, looking over at the breakfast buffet that the waiters were beginning to put away. In a last minute decision, she jogged up, returning with another bagel and nudging Alex as she settled back into her seat. “Jeremiah told me you’re taking private dance lessons?”

Alex blinked, words still coming slowly that early in the morning. “What?”

“Were you really avoiding dance lessons because you were embarrassed to be bad in front of other people?”

“Oh, uh, I don’t know.”

Lowering her voice and glancing around, Kara whispered, “Hear you’re taking them with the hot instructor.”

Alex privately disagreed; there was definitely someone else she thought was more deserving of the moniker, “hot instructor.” “Um, yeah. Yeah, I have my first lesson with James this afternoon.”

“Have you seen his arms?” Kara wiggled her eyebrows, giggling when Alex made gagging noises.

“What happened to Mike?”

“Nothing.” Kara lowered her voice, glancing down the table to where Jeremiah and Eliza were sitting. “Actually…I wanted to see if you could cover for me tonight.” Kara’s cheeks colored, and she let out a soft giggle, leaning in to whisper in Alex’s ear. “Mike invited me back to his cabin.”

“Kara! No—don’t…not with him.”

Kara narrowed her eyes. “Why are you so mean about him? He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Look, I just—he was a real jerk to the dancers. Thinks he’s better than them just because he’s in college and has money or whatever.”

“I’ve never seen him act like that, Alex. Maybe you’re just jealous.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m happy, and you can’t even be happy for me, even though I totally covered for you last night.”

“No—it’s not about your being happy, Kara. I want you to be happy and to find a nice guy. But this Mike…I just don’t think it’s him.”

“You’ve met him for, like, a minute.”

“I—” Alex was cut of by Kara’s hand.

“I’m going down to the dance lessons that are apparently beneath you. Just…let me have tonight.”

“Fine.”

\---

That afternoon, Alex met James up in the staff cabin, grimacing at the sight of Maggie seated off to the side. “Aren’t you the one, um, teaching me?”

“Well, you’ll be doing Maggie’s part, so it’s good to have her here too to demonstrate.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t wanna be here either,” Maggie grumbled as she pulled herself up off the windowsill and clicked on the music. “Now watch. I don’t want to have to do this a hundred times before you finally figure it out.”

James counted out loud for Alex’s benefit as he moved Maggie around the room, calling out basic directions and drawing Alex’s attention to a few of the more complicated moves she’d need to learn. Not that they added in big lifts or anything fancy like that at the beginning. No, instead they started with their feet and something they kept calling a frame that Alex thought was maybe some sort of hazing initiation ritual of making her stand as awkwardly as humanly possible. But she complied. And let her arms be dragged up. And listened to the music—“No, really _listen_ to it”—and counted out loud, which made her feel like she was back in kindergarten.

Listening and counting. It should have been easy. Should have. Within the first minute Alex had stepped on James’s toes no less than six times.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Alex groaned when her feet moved without her consent yet again.

“Oh look, she curses when Daddy isn’t around to hear it,” Maggie drawled from her seat over on the windowsill.

Alex rounded on Maggie, fire in her eyes, her fists balled up. “You don’t know shit about my life either. I’m here, spending the next week trying to do something that, no, I’m _not_ very good at, and I’m doing it all to save your ass. So if you’re gonna sit there and do nothing but be mean, just go. Leave. You’re not helping.”

Maggie tilted her head to the side, and once more Alex felt as though she were being put to some kind of test. But then Maggie was scooting further back onto the windowsill, remaining quiet that time.

By the end of hour two, Alex was sticky with sweat and her feet hurt, but she’d managed to make it through several bars of music without stepping on James’s toes—not that they’d done anything but the most basic of steps—and she counted it as an accomplishment.

She and James practiced for another hour or two while Maggie went down to teach her own lessons, and eventually they called it quits. “Try to practice the footwork tonight if you can,” James called after her.

“Will do.”

“And, uh, thanks. For helping out.”

Alex shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for the wonderful comments! Today we've got a scene I know a lot of you have been waiting for, so here's to hoping you enjoy! When my adorable little terror on 4 paws gives me a few minutes, I swear I'll get around to responding.

The next day, Alex and James snuck in an hour of practice before he had to go teach, then Alex wandered around the grounds, counting out the 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1, 2, 3 4 beat in her head as she danced down a secluded dirt path.

“Wait, wait, we can’t. Someone might see!”

Alex froze.

Slightly nervous, high-pitched tittering followed.

“Come on, Eve, no one comes down this way.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed. She knew that voice.

Slipping past the first row of trees, Alex paused, waiting for the voices to sound again. Instead she was met with a giggling gasp that made her want to gag. Alex loudly cleared her throat and stepped on all of the twigs she could find until two figures emerged from the woods—Mike and some blonde girl she vaguely recognized from the meals and forced socialization in the dining hall.

“What are you doing here?” Alex asked, her hands on her hips as she glared at Mike.

“Oh, Mike was just showing me—”

“Not you. Him,” Alex growled.

“Hey, don’t go pointing fingers. It’s the summer. We’re all just having a good time.” The easygoing smile made Alex want to punch him.

“That’s what you’re doing with my baby sister? Just having a good time?”

“From what I hear, it’s what you’ve been doing with Max. She’s learning it somewhere.”

Alex lunged forward then, landing one solid punch before Mike pushed her away.

“What the fuck?” He turned to the side, spitting out a mix of blood and saliva. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“Maybe I am. But if you don’t want to see me be even worse, you should stay the hell away from my sister.”

Ignoring Mike’s threats about lawsuits and talk of important parents who wouldn’t let her get away with it, Alex turned to Eve. “Hey, do you need help getting up to the main area?”

“I, um, I think I’m fine.” Eve’s gaze darted between Mike’s retreating figure and Alex’s hand a few times. “I’m just going to walk—alone.”

“Right.”

Alex followed her back anyway, splitting off only once there were plenty of other people around. The sight of people leaving the dining hall after lunch and the reminder of the time sent her running for the staff cabin, arriving slightly winded at the same time as James.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Fine, fine,” Alex wheezed. “Got worried I might be late.”

“You both are,” Maggie said, leaning up against the door and rolling her eyes. “Now get in. Let’s see how things are going.” She barely gave Alex a minute to catch her breath before turning on the music and ordering them to the center of the room.

Despite a mistake or two, Alex felt better that time. Sure, she stumbled on turns, and once or twice she found herself turning in the wrong direction or stepping on James’s feet or moving on the one, but it wasn’t anything like her first few disastrous attempts.

James smiled at her when they finished. “That’s better. I can tell you’ve been practicing.”

“That’s nowhere near where she needs to be.”

Alex and James turned towards Maggie, and Alex bit at the inside of her cheek to keep from yelling or crying as she listened to Maggie list out all the things she was apparently doing wrong—something about spaghetti arms and missed steps and too much time spent staring at her feet.

“She looks like she’s taking a test. That’s not dancing; it’s—it’s counting and stomping.”

Embarrassment prickled at Alex’s skin, and she could feel herself tensing. She wanted to remind Maggie that she’d only been trying for a single day at that point—not exactly years of lessons and practice.

“Back in position,” Maggie barked.

With a roll of her eyes, Alex obliged, only to find her arms being manhandled. “Hold the frame. Strong arms. Come on.” Alex tensed her muscles. “This is your space, yeah? That’s his. You don’t let him into yours.” Alex nodded. “And what’s this on your hand?”

“Oh.” Alex grimaced at the sight of blood flecked across slightly bruised knuckles. “Um…blood.”

“The fuck were you doing?”

“I, er, punched Mike.”

“Wait.” James’s eyes widened. “You’re the one that split his lip open?”

Rubbing at the back of her neck, Alex ducked her head, only looking up again at the sound of Maggie’s low chuckle.

“Maybe you’re not so bad after all.”

Alex shrugged. “He had it coming.”

“Well, duh. What’d he try to do this time?” Maggie’s jaw flexed as she looked over Alex’s clothing. “He didn’t try something with you did he?”

“What? No. No, it’s just, um, he’s been seeing my little sister, but I caught him with one of the other guests out in the woods. Besides”—Alex lifted her shoulders, not making eye contact with James or Maggie—“I know he can be a real ass to some of the other people that work here.”

“Understatement,” Maggie huffed.

“But, hey, Alex?” Alex looked up at the serious quality to James’s voice. “You should make sure your sister’s being careful.”

“Yeah, I, uh, she wasn’t too happy when I warned her off the first time, but I’ll try.”

After a moment of quiet, Maggie was back behind Alex, straightening her arms once more. “We’re gonna do this all together.”

Alex only nodded, not quite trusting her voice to work when Maggie’s strong arms were still bracketing her own, the heat radiating off of Maggie’s body still so close to her back, too reminiscent of the one night they’d danced together.

It went even worse with Maggie behind her, distracted as Alex was by her close proximity. But Maggie remained undeterred, simply calling out, “Again!” each time the song came to an end.

After a few rounds, Alex felt some of the movements becoming slightly more fluid—even if they were interspersed with jerky moments as Alex jolted each time Maggie’s voice rang out.

When Maggie sat back down, though, things deteriorated again.

“No, no, no.” The music clicked off, the room descending into silence, save for the steady rhythm of Maggie’s feet clicking across the floor, her fingers drumming against her thigh. “Okay, let me guess: you thought James and I were dating when you first saw us performing, yeah?”

Alex’s gaze darted between the two of them. She wondered if it was some kind of test. “Um, yes.”

“Exactly. When you’re dancing, you’re telling a story. You’re selling the audience more than just the steps and turns and lifts.” Maggie reached out to James, demonstrating a few steps of the dance he and Alex had been practicing. “See the difference? You—your hips are stiff. Your movements are stiff. You’re barely getting close to him.”

“It’s my—my zone. You told me not to let him in.”

One of the corners of Maggie’s mouth quirked up for a second. “Right. But you shouldn’t look like middle schoolers who have been forced to dance together even though they’re pretty convinced they’re catching cooties.” Alex could feel her cheeks warming and suspected a pink blush was creeping up her chest. “Think about how we danced at the party.” It was past suspicion at that point; Alex knew her cheeks were stained a deep shade of red. Luckily Maggie’s attention was on James again. “James, let us work on our own for a bit. I’ll find you after your afternoon lessons.”

James wasn’t about to disagree with a direct order like that, so, with a mouthed, “Good luck,” to Alex, he headed out the door.

Alex tried to ignore the way her heart pounded against her ribs, and she wiped her suddenly sweaty palms against her jean shorts as discreetly as she could.

“Arms up.”

Alex followed instructions, biting back her groans of frustration each time Maggie stopped them to chastise Alex for some failure or another.

“Move with me, not against me. Again.”

“Stop using weird platitudes!” Alex finally snapped. “I don’t get it. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Maggie stopped short. “Okay, think about it. Right now, I’m your partner. I’m leading. You just have to trust me to lead you properly, trust me to steer you in the right direction and not let you fall or stumble.”

“Oh-kay.”

“But you have to act like you want to be moving with me. It’s trust, yeah, but it’s also…a kind of intimacy.” Alex’s breath caught in her throat as Maggie’s hands returned to her hips. “Like in, well”—Maggie chuckled—“most partnered activities, things go better when you can lose yourself in it.”

“I, um…”

“Don’t tell me. You’ve never done that either.”

“No!” Alex let out an indignant huff as she crossed her arms. “I didn’t say that.” Maggie arched an eyebrow in challenge. “It’s just, you know, never been…like that.” She didn’t add that dancing with Maggie her first night had been much closer to that level of eroticism than anything else.

Some emotion flashed across Maggie’s face, but it was gone before Alex could make an attempt at naming it.

“Try to just…let the world drop away. Be here. With me.” The thought made Alex’s heart race, and she sort of thought she might be sick. Or trip. But instead she managed a strangled little noise that she hoped sounded like, “Okay.”

Under Maggie’s instructions, Alex let her eyes flutter closed, brought her hand up to Maggie’s heart to feel it beating and try to catch some rhythm there. It should have been cheesy. But with her hand against the soft skin of Maggie’s chest and Maggie’s warm hand overtop of hers and Maggie’s raspy voice telling her exactly what to listen for, Alex thought it might have been one of the defining moments of her life.

Then they were dancing, and Alex still stepped on Maggie’s toes a few times, but it felt different. Like even with the mistakes, maybe it looked better, looked more like dancing instead of marching.

“Good,” Maggie murmured as they came to a stop. Alex hoped Maggie didn’t notice the shiver that ran through her at the word.

“Thanks.”

“Now, I need to go eat, and you should too. But come back tonight, and I can give you a brief introduction to some of the turns—see if we can’t get you to actually spin instead of trying to walk your way through them.” Maggie tilted her head to the side for a moment, looking at Alex. “Though we’ll want James for the few where a bit of a height difference is, uh, preferable.”

“You mean a height difference in the other direction?” Alex teased, wondering if it was okay the second it left her mouth.

“Yeah, yeah, gloat about your few inches all you want. We’ll see how well you do when we put you in the costume you’ll have to wear for performing.” That shut Alex up.

“Are we, um, is that happening tonight?”

“We’ll wait til later on for that particular brand of torture. Get ready for blisters.”

Alex groaned. Her feet already ached; the idea of enduring an even worse form of torture sounded distinctly awful. “You want to come down to dinner with me?”

Maggie cocked her head to the side and regarded Alex closely. “You haven’t noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“Staffers don’t eat with guests.”

“Oh.” Alex blinked slowly, realizing she hadn’t ever seen Maggie or James or any of the other dancers down in the dining hall.

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s a thing. Don’t worry about it. Besides, didn’t you want to talk to your sister?”

“Right.” A grimace twisted up Alex’s mouth. She suspected Kara wouldn’t want to hear what she had to say.

As it turned out, Kara had something to say first. The moment Alex walked into their room in the cabin, Kara stomped forward. “What the heck, Alex?”

“What’s wrong?”

“You punched Mike!”

Alex stopped short. “I—it’s not—he was cheating on you, Kara!”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“Kara, I saw him and Eve in the woods together. I heard them.”

“I don’t know what you think you saw or heard, but he’s not that kind of guy. He came right to me, told me about how he was out walking Eve to her next lesson when you punched him without even letting him explain.”

“Kara. You can’t really believe him over me. I’m your sister.”

“Doesn’t feel like it much these days.”

“No!” A wave of guilt crashed over Alex. “It’s not—”

But then Kara’s expression was hard, her features closed off in a way Alex hadn’t seen since her first few months with them. “I don’t get what’s been going on with you. You barely call me from college. You won’t talk to me when you’re home on breaks. You’re sneaking off all day and every night. And now you’re mad at me for finding someone who thinks I’m special. Someone who might actually _want_ to spend time with me.”

“It’s not that. I do want to spend time with you, and I—I can tell you that you’re special.” In the face of Kara’s glare, Alex relented. “Okay, fine, fine, it’s not the same. But there are guys who wouldn’t just tell you that you’re special. There are guys who would _treat_ you like you are. Better guys. I get that Mike is”—Alex bit back her gut reaction of disgust—“cute, and he seems like he’s fun, but that’s all this is for him: just a bit of summer fun.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe I don’t, but I know that I don’t want to see you get hurt. You deserve better, Kara.”

“Can’t you just be happy for me?” Kara’s voice cracked on the last word, her blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “You don’t know what it’s been like for me this past year without you. It’s not like we ever talk these days.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. It’s fine, I guess.” It didn’t feel fine. “I’m gonna go to dinner now. I assume I won’t see you?”

“No, I, uh, I’m coming down too.”

Their conversation at dinner was stilted, lacking the easy rhythm they’d once found together by the end of high school. But it was something, and Alex had to hope it was enough to keep Kara from dismissing her concerns entirely.

\---

That night, she returned to the cabin for turning lessons and spent two hours tripping over her own feet, which suddenly felt three sizes too large, and slamming into Maggie, knocking shoulders and foreheads and chests together until Alex’s elbow managed to collide with one of the deeper bruises, making Maggie wince and hiss in pain.

“Fuck! I’m so sorry!”

“It’s—it’s fine.”

“Here, let me, um, I can try to find ice?”

“The bags of frozen food are in the ice chest downstairs,” Maggie grunted, sinking down to the floor and tugging up her shirt.

Alex nearly bolted in a desperate attempt to escape her own reaction to the reveal of smooth skin and taut muscles. On her way back up, she pressed one of the bags to the back of her neck, hoping it would quell the heat that seemed to course through her whole body. It did not.

“Thanks,” Maggie muttered as she took the two bags from Alex, placing one on the ground as she pressed the larger one to the bruise on her ribs that had turned a darker shade of purple than the rest. “Can you just”—Maggie motioned at the ice pack—“hold that for a second?”

“Um, yeah. Yeah, of course.”

Alex wondered if Maggie could see the tremble to her hands as she brought them up to hold the ice pack steady, while Maggie dragged the other bag up to her shoulder, slipping her hand under Alex’s once she had balanced the other.

“Are you feeling better?” Alex asked.

“Eh, it’s not so bad. Covering them up every morning is the worst part about it honestly.”

“Has this, uh, happened before?”

Maggie shrugged, trying for a look of nonchalance. “Few times.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“No, I know. But still.”

They sank into silence then, and Alex pulled at the laces of her sneakers until she couldn’t stand the quiet any longer. “I, um, I’ve been wanting to apologize.”

“I literally just told you that you don’t need to.”

“Not—not for that.”

“Oh?”

“I…that first night when I…you thought…” Alex let out a shuddering exhale and dropped her head into her hands, rubbing her fingers across her face. “It wasn’t what you thought.”

When Alex looked up, she found Maggie’s jaw clenched, her expression guarded. “What do you think I thought?”

“I…well, I was talking to Winn.”

“That fucking kid, I swear to god. He’s gonna get himself hurt running his mouth one of these days.”

“No, it wasn’t—not like that. I just…he told me that I should tell you.” Alex swallowed past the lump in her throat, wondering if maybe she could leave it there.

“Tell me what, Alex?”

Alex’s head snapped up. “You said my name.”

“Would you prefer we go back to watermelon girl?”

“No! No, um, it was nice.” Alex cringed, mentally berating herself. _Stupid. So stupid._ “I mean, you know, I, uh, Alex is my name. Alexandra, actually, but no one calls me that. So it’s just, um, Alex. Alex Danvers.”

“Nice to formally meet you, Alex Danvers. Considering my name is plastered all over the course offerings, I assume you know it already, but Maggie. Maggie Sawyer.”

Alex bobbed her head up and down, wondering if the world might do her a favor and swallow her whole. “Yeah.”

“So what’d you want to tell me, Danvers? What does dear Winn think is so important that I need to know it?”

“I, um, you asked if I was family?” Alex chanced a peek up at Maggie, finding her staring intently back at her. “I, uh, I—I am.” It was barely a whisper, but she knew Maggie heard it when a warm hand found hers, a soft thumb stroking across her trembling palm.

“You’re okay. It’s okay.”

“I don’t really know that it is.” Alex hated the way her voice wobbled and cracked.

“It will be, okay? It will be,” Maggie repeated, her thumb still rubbing soft circles around the back of her hand. “This your first time telling someone?”

“Kind of.”

“Besides Winn?”

Alex shrugged. “I, um, there was a girl. At college.”

Maggie bit back a smile. “Want to tell me about her?”

“Jessica. Um, that was her name. We met. At a party.”

“Mhm.”

“She was a good dancer. Not as good as you, of course.”

Maggie let out a little huff of laughter. “Of course not.”

“We were walking back together, and she asked if I wanted to come up to her room, and—and I did.”

“Yeah?”

“We ended up kissing in her bed, but then her roommate got back.” Alex could feel Maggie tense next to her. “I, uh, sort of bolted after Jessica pushed me away, and then, I don’t know. I ducked the next time I saw her and managed to avoid her for the rest of the semester.”

“And let me guess: you also managed to avoid having to think about what that whole night meant for you for the rest of the semester as well?”

“Kind of.” Alex’s voice was small, but she was proud of herself for getting the words out at all.

“You like this Jessica?”

“Oh—no, no, it’s nothing like that.”

“So what’s got you suddenly telling me?”

“That first night, um, it was…really nice. With you. And I didn’t want you to stop, but then you were saying things I maybe wasn’t ready to hear, and it was all, you know, sort of a lot to have happen all at once.”

“And out in public?”

Alex followed the grain of the wood beneath them with her eyes. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I assumed you were out. At least to yourself. I just—James said something that made me think you were, that’s all.”

Alex worried her lower lip between her teeth, imagining all the humiliating possibilities of what he might have said. Probably something like, “Hey, this girl I’m dancing with is clearly checking you out.”

“I wouldn’t have tried anything if I’d known it was all so new. I’m sorry for that.”

Alex didn’t know how to explain to Maggie that it would definitely be fine if she wanted to try something again, so instead she gestured at the ice packs. “You should probably take those off for a little bit now.”

“Thanks. Maybe we call it a night?”

“Okay. And, um, thanks for listening.”

“Anytime, Alex. I mean it.”

Alex nodded, stuffing her hands in her pocket and drawing in a deep breath as soon as she got outside. The whole walk back, she wondered if people were looking at her funny, like somehow they knew—knew she was different. Maybe that was simply what it was like out most nights before one or two in the morning.

When she got into the cabin, she heard the sound of faint sniffling, but when she opened the door to their room, Kara was sleeping—or at least feigning sleep—and she didn’t answer when Alex whispered her name.

\---

Kara was gone by the time Alex rolled out of bed the next morning, her feet blistered and muscles she only knew about from anatomy textbooks aching. A long, hot shower eased some of the pain, though slipping her feet back into her Converse felt like a herculean effort, as did the walk up the hill to the dining hall to catch the last few minutes of breakfast.

“C’mon, you have to believe me.” Alex’s hands instinctively curled into fists at the sound of Mike’s voice.

“I just…I guess, yeah, no, that makes sense.” Alex’s eyes narrowed as she heard Kara hedging, her voice quieter than it usually was.

“So tonight? You’ll meet me after my shift?”

“Yeah—yeah, I can do that. And I’m sorry for, you know, doubting you.”

“Just don’t let it happen again.” Mike’s words were followed by a laugh that Alex guessed was supposed to make them sound playful, but to Alex it could only ever be menacing, particularly when it was directed at her little sister.

Ignoring the pangs of tight, overworked muscles, Alex puffed herself up and put on her best glare as she stalked down past the side of the dining hall so that she could “happen” to stumble into Kara and Mike. “Mike.”

“Alex?” Kara spun around as Alex took her spot beside Kara.

“Hey. Figured I’d, uh, try to catch you for breakfast.”

“Breakfast is over.”

Alex tried not to feel slighted by the tightness in Kara’s voice. “Um, maybe we do something together tonight, then?” She hoped Maggie and James wouldn’t need her all day, though with the show fast approaching, she wasn’t counting on it.

“I have plans. With Mike.”

Alex just barely restrained the urge to give Mike a black eye to go with the split lip as he sent a gloating smile her way. “Right, right. Well, uh, tomorrow maybe…”

“Maybe.”

As Alex watched Kara walk away, she couldn’t help but feel like that maybe was more of a no.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad you enjoyed the scene between Alex and Maggie in the last chapter! Hope you enjoy this one as well! The pup and I area bout to go play in his first snowfall of the season - we'll see you back here tomorrow!

“No, no, no! Where’s the beat, and why aren’t you on it? Find your feet. Hold your frame.”

Alex let out a groan of annoyance as Maggie’s hands lifted her arms once more to their proper position. She barely even noticed the thrill of excitement that ran through her at every graze of Maggie’s fingers these days, her attention held instead by counts and beats and mental reminders and so much pain in so many new places.

“Again.” And then Maggie was hitting the music and James was looking at her with that damn supportive smile that made Alex feel like she _should_ be getting it somehow. “1, 2, move it faster, 5, 6, don’t stare at your feet.”

“You didn’t tell me you’d be strapping torture devices to my feet,” Alex grumbled, glaring at the newly acquired heels that she was fairly certain were filling with blood with every step.

Maggie’s brow furrowed. “Did you not notice that I dance in heels?”

“Why would your feet have been what I was staring at?”

Alex’s words hung in the air for several interminably long seconds until James disguised a quiet snort of laughter in a cough.

“I mean, you know, um, the movement is generally, um, higher up, you know?”

Maggie seemed to sense that Alex might bolt—heels be damned—with any additional teasing, so she simply nodded. “Right, well, unfortunately they’re part of the traditional costume.”

Alex let out a vague noise of understanding and snapped back to attention, for once grateful when the music and the torturous dancing began again.

“And 1 and 2 and 3, now spin, 5 and 6 and 7 and _good_!”

Alex wasn’t sure if Maggie was taking pity on her and pretending like she’d done something right, but she’d take it at this point, especially since it came along with an order to go get water and rest her feet for a few minutes.

After nearly collapsing into the window seat Maggie normally occupied, Alex took the opportunity to glance down at her feet, grimacing at the blood that had seeped through the bandages she’d wrapped around the back of her heels earlier that day. As she sipped at her water, letting her heart rate slow down, the sounds of Maggie and James’ whispered conversation floated over to her. Things like:

“Two days! She needs to start working on it now!”

“Basics first…”

“…too late”

“…only got the turns because of you! …can’t do this.”

Alex debated interrupting. On the one hand, it’d be nice to sit on the windowsill longer. Maybe forever. On the other, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get the courage to dance onstage if she heard any more about all the things she couldn’t do. Finally, with a bitten back grunt of pain, Alex pulled herself back up onto her feet and cleared her throat. “Hey, I, uh, I’m ready to start again.”

“You sure?” James asked, his tone comforting as he glanced down at Alex’s feet.

Maggie, however, seemed to guess what had happened and gave Alex a firm nod. “You’re doing better, you really are, but the dance we perform normally has a lift in it. I think you need to start working on it now.”

“But,” James interjected, “we can also keep perfecting the rest of the dance. If need be, we can cut the lift and replace it with something simpler—another turn maybe.”

“Will they be disappointed if you don’t have it?” Alex glanced at Maggie, watching her for the honest reaction instead of whatever kind words James would tell her to try to alleviate some of the pressure. “I don’t—you shouldn’t lose a job because I’m not ready.”

“I don’t—”

“She said she’d try it, James. Let her.”

“Alright…”

Which was how Alex found herself alternating between stuttering to an early stop and barreling into James for the next half hour until he excused himself to go teach his midday lessons, promising he’d be back after dinner if Alex was up for it and asking Alex to work on the basics until then.

Alex waited until James and Maggie had left the room before sinking down to the floor, dropping her head into her hands and stifling a noise of frustration.

“You’re not bad, you know that, right?”

Alex slammed the back of her head into the wall behind her in her haste to look up.

Maggie hid a smile behind her hand as Alex tried to look stoic, like maybe she’d meant to slam her head into the wall, totally could have been intentional. “You okay there?”

“Fine. Just fine. Really fine.”

“You didn’t seem too fine when James had to leave.”

“How do you think I’m doing?” Alex snapped. “You yell at me for doing the wrong thing every three seconds. I still stumble on the turns. My feet are bleeding. And I can’t even manage to jump into the air, let alone turn it into a coordinated thing.”

“First of all, let’s take a deep breath and slow down, yeah?”

Alex bit her tongue and tried not to yell about how little time there seemed to be for breathing.

“I tell you when you do things wrong so that you can get better. And you are—getting better, I mean. But if I stopped you to tell you when things were going well, that’d be pretty counterintuitive, yeah? You want things to keep on going when they’re good.”

Alex shrugged, feeling her cheeks color at the lukewarm praise in spite of herself. “I guess.”

“And I bet you can jump, just like I bet you can turn smoothly—”

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Fine.” Alex motioned for Maggie to continue, and Maggie let herself slide down the wall to join on Alex on the floor.

“Know what both of those things have in common?”

“I can’t do either?”

“No. They both require trust. In your partner, sure, but also in your own body.”

Alex let out a snort, waving off Maggie’s look of confusion. “Sorry, just, you’re asking for a lot here.”

With a quiet noise of effort that drew Alex’s attention to the bruises still littering Maggie’s frame, Maggie pushed herself off the floor and held out a hand to Alex. “C’mere.” Alex narrowed her eyes at the offered hand in suspicion. “You can even take off the shoes.”

That was enough to get Alex moving, and soon she was flexing her toes and eyeing the damage done to the backs of her heels. She watched as Maggie toed off her own shoes in turn before letting herself be led back to the middle of the room.

“Do you trust me?”

“Wha—I—I mean—I—yeah, of course, sure.”

A snort of laughter escaped Maggie’s lips. “You don’t sound all that sure.”

“I mean, I just, I don’t have all the facts yet.”

“So what do you need to know? You tell me.”

“Well, I, uh, I trust you…as a person.”

“But…?”

“I feel like you’re about to make me do something with dancing.”

“Pretty good guess there, Danvers.”

A warm flush crept up Alex’s neck. “Right, and I…I get that you have to tell me when things are wrong, but I just, I don’t know.” Alex shrugged, her gaze trailing along the wooden floorboards.

“You don’t think I believe in you.”

Alex hated how Maggie seemed to be able to see right through her, putting things into words far before she felt ready for them. Her voice was quiet when she responded. “Why should you?”

“Because you’ve learned more in a few days than most people getting private lessons manage all summer.”

“They probably weren’t as bad as I was when I started.”

“Knock it off.” There was an edge to Maggie’s voice that caught Alex off guard. “You’re a hard worker, and when you manage to forget that we’re watching or that this is for a performance, you look really damn great out there.”

Alex pushed away all the questions about why Maggie might be looking and if it might be the same kind of looking that Alex found herself indulging in far too often…really whenever Maggie demonstrated something…which normally meant she had to demonstrate it several times over. Alex was fairly certain James had noticed.

“So I want you to believe in yourself, even if it’s a little forced at the beginning. You can do this.” Alex nodded like she believed it. “No, no, I want you to say it.”

“Maggie,” Alex whined.

“Alex.”

“This is stupid.”

“Hey, you’re getting dance lessons from a fucking professional right now. That means everything I do and say is professional expertise.”

One side of Alex’s mouth curled up into a smile, and she shook her head a little. “Fine. Icandothis.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I can do this,” Alex mumbled, her cheeks flaming.

“One more time, really didn’t catch that.”

“I said, I can do this. Okay?”

“I guess if that’s the best you can do…” Maggie let out an exaggerated sigh that left Alex rolling her eyes before her attention was caught by Maggie pulling something out of a bag.

“What’s that?”

“We’re getting you out of your head.”

“Ooh, is it wine?”

Maggie fixed Alex with a stern glare. “No. I don’t want to increase the likelihood of you falling and maiming yourself on something or other.”

“I’ll have you know, I’m an excellent dancer when slightly intoxicated.”

“And apparently pretty gay too,” Maggie murmured just low enough to leave Alex with too much doubt about the specific words to call her on it. Maggie cleared her throat. “You’re constantly looking at your feet, and then you end up missing steps and falling off the music and getting caught in your head.”

“Ouch.”

“But the point is, if you just trusted yourself and felt the music, you’d be fine. I’ve seen you be fine.”

“Oh-kayy.”

“So we’re just going to make sure you can’t look at your feet.”

Alex froze at the sight of the bandana in Maggie’s hands. “What…?”

“I told you: it’s all about trust.”

And Alex wanted to say that she could fake trust without doing this. She wanted to say that this was a terrible idea and would likely lead to broken toes and sprained ankles at best and concussions at worst. She wanted to say that there were 9,000 better ways to go about achieving trust, especially when that trust was supposed to be built with James. But Maggie was standing there and smiling at her with that dimple that somehow, Alex decided, she hadn’t spent nearly enough time admiring. And then Maggie’s warm, soft fingers were brushing her hair back from her face and tying some hideous bandana around her head, but it may as well have been silk embroidered with golden threads for how special Alex felt when Maggie deemed it “perfect.”

The first two rounds were dreadful. She still tried to glance down at her feet and still lost the beat, only this time she had no vision to help her catch her footing, so she ended up bowling straight into Maggie head-first.

The third time she started getting the hang of it, even if her movements were tentative and tinged with the awkwardness that comes from feeling like one hasn’t the faintest fucking clue where their feet are.

The fourth round, Maggie pulled her a little closer, and Alex prayed she couldn’t feel the shiver that ran through her whole body at the contact.

The fifth round, Alex started to get it. The turns, even with the height differential, were smoother, the movements _feeling_ right in a way that Alex never believed she’d get to understand, let alone experience.

The sixth round went well enough that mid-song Maggie whispered, “Good,” her warm breath ghosting across Alex’s ear, and Alex promptly spun hard in the wrong direction, bringing both of them tumbling to the floor in a tangle of sweaty skin and far too little clothing for Alex to be groping around without the use of her eyes.

“Can you just hold still?” Maggie finally snapped, her words followed by a burst of laughter that convinced Alex that Maggie wasn’t actually mad. A moment later, the bandana was off her face. Alex blinked, adjusting once more to the brightness of the room.

“Sorry ’bout that,” Alex mumbled, her gaze downcast as she picked at the skin around her nails.

“It’s fine. You were doing really, really well, you know that, right?”

“Um, yeah…yeah, it did feel better.”

“Think you can do it without the blindfold?”

“Maybe?”

Then they were dancing again. As Alex felt herself easing into things with Maggie, she wished, not for the first time, that Maggie would be the one dancing with her on stage that Friday night.

“What?”

Alex froze, her mind screeching to a halt as she realized some of her thoughts might have turned into words. “No, uh, just, um, thinking that, nothing.” She was grateful when Maggie didn’t push her on it, switching back to talk of the routine.

“So the lift.”

A small part of Alex thought maybe talking about her massive crush on Maggie would be preferable to thinking about her afternoon spent crashing into James.

“You had the footwork right to lead into it when you and I were dancing.” Alex wanted to point out that a lot of things went right when they were dancing. “So now the question is just getting you to trust that James will catch you.”

“I think there’s the whole jumping part that comes before the trust.”

“Jump.”

“Excuse me.”

“You heard me. Jump.”

Alex bit her tongue to keep from protesting, ignoring the amused glint in Maggie’s eyes as she forced herself up off the floor and gave a little bunny hop.

“Nah, I want you to jump like you’re in grade school again. Like…like back when you were competing to see who could bounce the highest.”

Alex bent her knees and sprung into the air, feeling utterly ridiculous. She suspected that there were a lot of ridiculous things she’d end up doing if Maggie simply said the word.

“Good. And you certainly won’t need to jump that high for James, so the jumping bit isn’t the problem; it’s trusting that someone will catch you.”

“Right…so simple. I guess James and I are spending all day tomorrow working on that?” Alex asked as she lowered herself to the floor again, stretching a bit to keep her muscles from getting stiff as she waited.

Maggie shrugged. “We can start now.”

“James is free?”

“No. But I’m here.”

Alex paused, her brow furrowing as she took in Maggie sitting cross-legged on the ground, her frame looking more diminutive than ever. “I mean, no offense, Maggie, but…you’re a little small for that.”

“What? You think I can’t pick you up?” Maggie’s eyes flashed with a defiance born of too many years spent proving people wrong.

“I don’t—that’s not what I said.”

“Stand up.”

Alex did as she was told, and she soon found herself being scooped up by Maggie like she weighed nothing, her legs automatically moving to wrap around Maggie’s waist before her mind caught up to the reality of what that would mean, at which point her breath caught in her throat, and she let out an undignified squeak that, in the grand scheme of things, she reasoned, was still a lot better than some of the other things that might have slipped out.

“Have you not been picked up recently?”

“Um, I mean, my sister used to give me piggy-back rides when we were younger because she’s, like, freakishly strong, but that’s sort of the extent of it.”

Maggie looked like she was about to say something, but then she seemed to think better of it. “Okay, well, point is, it’s not like it’s that hard to pick you up.”

“Yeah, but I have to run and jump into James’ arms, not just let him pick me up.”

“That’s true, but it sort of looked like maybe you weren’t all that sure about the idea of being picked up in general, so I thought I could help with that first. God knows the first time I was supposed to get lifted, I nearly punched my partner in the face for touching me.”

Acutely aware of the fact that she was still being held in Maggie’s arms—and holy shit, Alex hadn’t realized exactly how much of a turn on Maggie’s strength would be—Alex only managed a jerky nod of her head. “Right.”

“And no, on this floor, I shouldn’t be the one to catch you. But…”

Alex tilted her head to the side as she waited for Maggie to complete her thought, ignoring her proximity to Maggie, ignoring the places where their bare skin was pressed together, ignoring the way her pulse seemed to be echoing deep inside her, its embodied rhythm drawing her attention to the aching need that threatened to consume her.

Maggie glanced out the windows. “What would you say to skipping dinner and going on a field trip?”

There were a hundred reasons why that sounded like a terrible idea, but Alex found herself nodding anyway as she dropped back to the floor, her legs trembling slightly as she staggered back a few steps. “I just have to go tell my parents that I’ll be gone for a while.” It was good—she could pretend like she and Kara were going somewhere to do her duty in covering for Kara, even if she still thought doing anything with Mike was a terrible idea.

“And while you’re up there, throw on a bathing suit, okay?”

“Um…okay.”

After slipping on her sneakers, Alex jogged back to the cabins, ignoring the stinging pain of her blisters and cuts, knowing that the faster she made it there, the faster she could get back to Maggie, and oh god, she really needed to get a handle on that.

She found Kara in their room, spinning around and looking at herself in the slightly warped mirror that hung on the inside of the closet door.

“Um, hey.” Alex hated how stilted things felt between them.

“Surprised you showed up.” Kara’s gaze was hard as she glanced over at Alex.

“Kara, come on.”

“You couldn’t be nice to Mike for five seconds this morning, Alex! Why is it so hard for you to be nice to the guy?”

“Because I’m worried about you!”

“Why?”

“He’s not—I just think you could do better, Kara. You’re my baby sister, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I’m not a kid anymore, Alex.”

“Fine.” Alex took a deep breath in through her nose. “I just…I wasn’t lying about Eve, but if you want to believe him, that’s your right.”

“He _is_ telling the truth.”

Alex bit back all the angry retorts on the tip of her tongue. “Just promise me you’ll be safe, okay?”

Kara lifted one of her shoulders, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. “I will. I mean, it’s not—I’m not saying that we’re going to, you know, go all the way or anything. I just want to be able to spend time with him without worrying.”

A wave of relief washed over Alex. “Yeah, I get it. I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad that you and I are doing sister night—dinner, dessert, hanging out, the whole works, okay? If you give me five minutes, I can be ready to leave with you.”

“Where are you going?”

Alex shrugged. “I figure if you’ve got plans, I can too.” She watched as emotions warred with each other on Kara’s face, her curiosity finally winning out over her stubborn streak.

“What are you doing?”

“Um, more dance lessons.”

“Oh my god, that’s totally code for sneaking around with James isn’t it?” Kara squealed, earlier annoyance quickly forgotten in the face of an opportunity for sisterly gossip. “He’s _so_ cute!”

“Um, something like that…”

“Alex,” Kara whined, “why don’t you share with me anymore?”

Alex felt guilt wrapping around her and settling like a dead weight in her stomach. Deciding that half-truths were better than making Kara think she didn’t want to talk to her like they used to anymore, Alex lowered her voice. “Look, I have a…a crush, okay? But I don’t know if it’s reciprocated. So I don’t want to make assumptions and then make an ass out of myself or get hurt or look stupid or whatever.”

“Oh, Alex, he definitely likes you!”

Alex couldn’t help the bark of laughter. “You’ve never even seen us together!”

“Okay, but you’re totally pretty, and smart, and when you want to, you can even be nice,” Kara teased, sticking her tongue out.

“Shut it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m just saying…he invited you to hang out tonight. That’s gotta mean something.”

Clamping down on the hope that threatened to surge up and overwhelm her, Alex made a noncommittal noise. “We’ll see. Anyway, you almost ready to go?”

Kara turned back to the mirror, cocking her head to the side as she assessed her reflection. “Maybe… I don’t know. Does this look okay?”

Alex glanced over at the pile of clothes strewn across Kara’s bed. “It’s fine, but if I were you, I’d go with the blue. It’s always been your color.”

The beaming smile Alex got in return was worth the knowledge that she was helping Kara get ready for a date with Mike, and while Kara changed her shirt, Alex slipped into the bathroom to pull on a bathing suit before going to tell her parents that she and Kara would be out all night.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for the comments! And now here's the lake scene

Maybe she’d died, Alex reasoned. Died and gone to heaven. Or this could also be hell. Really it could go either way. But there was no way that this—sitting behind Maggie Sawyer with her arms wrapped tight around her on a motorcycle riding down to a lake—was real life. At least not her life. Maybe the people who were brave enough to come out got to have moments like this, little escapes from a reality that could be all too cruel. But people like Alex Danvers? People who made out with girls and then ran away and ducked into bushes when they crossed paths again? No, that wasn’t her life.

But then the bike was coming to a stop in a gravel lot, and Maggie was pulling off her helmet, and Alex’s mouth was dryer than it had ever been.

“We’re here.”

Alex swallowed a few times, desperately trying to figure out at what point in the trip the connection between her brain, her mouth, and her limbs had been severed. Finally she managed to nod as she slipped off the bike, feeling slightly steadier as she put a bit of distance between herself and Maggie.

“Shit,” Maggie cursed under her breath.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well…I never asked, but, uh, can you swim?”

With a snort of laughter, Alex nodded. “You could say so.”

“Wait, no, Alex, I’m serious. I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“It’s very sweet of you to worry, but I promise, wading around in this little lake isn’t much compared to a decade spent surfing in the Pacific Ocean.”

Gravel skidded and crunched as Maggie tripped before righting herself, one hand on her motorcycle for balance. “Oh, I, uh, I hadn’t thought about you, uh, that’s great. Good. Yes, you can swim.”

“Uh, yeah, anyway. So why are we swimming?”

“Well…I figured you could practice getting the movement of the jump down without worrying about knocking me straight back into the hard floor.”

Alex paused, thinking about it for a few minutes. “I guess the water carries some of the weight…and it’ll slow me down too.”

Maggie nodded. “Plus, if you knock me down, it’s all good. I can swim.”

“Huh. This was a really good idea.”

“C’mon, Danvers, what did I say? Professional dancer. Expert opinions.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t let it go to your head.”

It wasn’t until they’d reached the water and Maggie began stripping down into a bathing suit that the reality of everything hit Alex. Sure, they’d been in tank tops most of the week, and yes, the shorts they’d been wearing weren’t exactly long, but they were certainly more than this…this _expanse_ of smooth skin and muscle. And oh my god she was staring. She was so obviously staring. She was gay and staring. She was really fucking gay. Oh god, how long had it been? She needed to say something and fast.

“Bruises,” Alex blurted out, her voice cracking halfway through the word. Alex decided it would probably be better to die than live to face another moment of reality.

“Um…yeah.” Maggie glanced down, suddenly looking self-conscious as she crossed her arms.

“Sorry, no! I just, um, how are you? Have you been icing?”

Maggie gave a curt nod of her head.

“That’s good. Yeah, I, uh, they seem to be healing. That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“If it’s gonna hurt you too much to do the jump, we really don’t have to.”

“No, really, it’s okay. I’ve had worse.”

The thought of Maggie dealing with worse, potentially without anyone there to make sure she got ice and help, made Alex want to scoop her up into her arms and hold her tight and never let her go.

“Water shouldn’t be too cold, but we’ll warm up soon enough.”

“Right.” Alex slowly waded into the water, letting the chill of it and the burning of the blisters on her feet distract her from too many inappropriate thoughts about Maggie.

Within the first 15 minutes, Maggie had been knocked into the water twice, and Alex was increasingly unwilling to even try, despite Maggie’s assurances that the water felt good and that not once had she been hurt. It took Maggie launching herself at Alex and dunking her in the water right back for Alex to begrudgingly call them “even” and get back to practice, which soon devolved into giggling and Maggie, looking more carefree than Alex had ever seen her, using each lift as the opportunity to throw Alex into the deeper water, rather than pretending like she could actually get Alex above her head.

By the end of it, they were improvising the routine, drawing closer to one another than some of the more formal steps called for and dipping one another low enough that their hair swished through the water. Maggie even managed her own take on the lift, getting Alex to wind an arm around her shoulders and jump up into a cradle carry to be spun around until Maggie let her down—gently if she was feeling generous, with a splash when she was not.

“Ya know, that’s a pretty excellent dance routine you’ve got,” Alex panted, still trying to catch her breath after having made it through the full, modified routine against the resistance of the water (and the struggle of ignoring just how right it felt to be pressed up against Maggie’s nearly naked body).

“It is,” Maggie agreed, slightly breathless.

“Might be pretty cool to get to see you up there on some stage doing the lifts.”

“Somehow I don’t think I’d be able to spin James quite so easily.”

Alex knocked her shoulder into Maggie’s, passing off her shiver at the close contact as being from the chill of the water. “I mean, you know, probably not with James. Maybe with a partner that you might like to be dancing with…”

Maggie’s lips curled up into a wistful smile. “Yeah…maybe one day. You just hope you’re not too old for it by the time that day comes.”

Alex swallowed heavily, her gaze falling to the ripples of water. “Right.”

“Don’t get me wrong, there are places for it! Just not the ones that are gonna pay my bills.”

Alex nodded sinking back into the water until it came all the way up to her neck.

“Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t—don’t let that be a reason for you not to come out—if that’s something you want, I mean. There are…there are a lot of really great things out there too.”

“I guess.”

“There are, Alex. There’s community out there too. People fighting with you, for you. And love and support and laughter. And women, which, you know, we’re pretty fuckin great.”

“Yeah…you are.” Alex’s voice was barely a whisper, but the way Maggie ducked her head suggested she’d heard.

“We should probably head back before it gets any darker.”

Alex had noticed the sun setting earlier, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to say anything—not when staying quiet meant staying there with Maggie, living in their own little world where Maggie didn’t have to go to court to pay a fine for trying to make the world a little more just; where Alex didn’t need to go back to dancing with James, who, however kind, could never compare to Maggie; where being out, being _themselves_ , was perfectly fine.

After drying off and throwing her shirt and shorts back on over her still damp bathing suit, Alex hopped onto the bike, trying to let the warmth of Maggie’s body pressed up against hers chase away the melancholy mood that had descended.

When they got back, Maggie nudged Alex. “I know I made you miss dinner, but normally some of the guys bring leftovers up to the staff cabins if you want food before you head back.”

“That’d be great, thanks.”

By the time they’d settled in on the floor of Maggie’s room with plates of dinner rolls and cold pasta, Alex could feel a chill seeping in and shivered despite herself.

“Shit, you’re still in wet clothes.”

“It’s fine!” Alex insisted, but Maggie was already on her feet, rustling through her cabinets and tossing a sweatshirt and a dry t-shirt at Alex.

A minute later, Alex emerged from the bathroom feeling significantly warmer and dryer than she had been. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Maggie shrugged.

Over dinner, Maggie asked about Kara, and Alex talked about feeling useless for not being able to dissuade Kara away from Mike and guilty for having pulled away so thoroughly during the year that Kara no longer felt like Alex cared enough to have her best interests at heart.

“You’ve had a lot going on, Alex. Don’t beat yourself up about taking time for yourself.”

“No, it’s just…I’ve always been there for her. It’s what I’m good at.”

“You’re pretty good at dancing too,” Maggie interjected with an easy-going smile that made Alex’s heart race.

“Shut up.”

“You complain when I criticize you. Now you complain when I compliment you. Girl’s gonna get confused.” Alex blushed and stammered, but Maggie waved it off. “I’m just teasing you. It’s…right, it’s hard. Because all families are different. And their expectations are different. But you’re allowed to have time for you.”

“It’s just…Kara and I were so close my senior year. And now I feel like I’ve fucked it all up.”

“How?”

“By pulling away! By…by making her think I don’t care.”

“She cares about you, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And what you’re going through? It’s real, and it can be really fucking hard. It’s okay that you haven’t been ready to share with everyone.”

“No, it’s not—I don’t think—I think Kara would be okay with it.”

“Well that’s great. And if you want to, maybe you should tell her. But being ready to come out to someone is about more than what you think the other person’s gonna say.”

Alex tilted her head to the side, her eyebrows scrunching together as she considered Maggie’s words. “I don’t…”

“You, Alex. I’m talking about you.”

“What about me?”

“It matters that you’re comfortable with it first. And sometimes that means taking time to yourself.”

“Oh.”

“And if you and your sister are as close as it sounds like you are, hopefully that’s something she’ll understand if you tell her some day.”

“I guess, it just…” Alex trailed off, pulling at a loose thread on her jean shorts. “I feel like a bad sister. And if she does something she regrets with Mike, then—”

“Then she’s her own woman who made her own decision. I’ve seen Mike… She wouldn’t be the first to ignore well-intentioned warnings, okay? He can be charming, I guess. If you like that sort of thing. And if she does ignore your warnings? Yeah, maybe it sucks. And maybe she gets hurt. But knowing you, I’m sure you’ll be there for her.”

Alex nodded, even though she felt like maybe she’d already missed some of those moments when Kara needed her that past year. Not wanting to think about it any longer, Alex nudged Maggie with her foot, their food long gone at that point. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“I don’t know. How’d you get into dance?”

“Well, at first I was forced into it.”

“Really?”

With a little laugh, Maggie nodded her head. “I was really into soccer—ya know, running around, scoring goals, getting dirty, screaming and cheering with my teammates, the whole works.” Alex grinned; she could imagine it. “But my parents decided I needed something more appropriate. Girlier. So dance it was. And obviously I hated the whole idea of it. I hated that my mom got me pink leotards. I hated how hard she brushed my hair to pull it back in a tight bun. I hated the other girls who all knew each other already and didn’t like the new kid.”

“I assume something changed?”

“Not the first year or two,” Maggie admitted. “But once I got out of the mandatory kind of intro to ballet type of stuff or whatever, I found something…fun. Freeing, in a way. And then there were things where you had to be strong, and I liked doing them. I liked knowing that my body could do those things.” Alex nodded. She’d certainly underestimated the way her muscles would ache after hours of practicing with Maggie and James. “Then there was more variety, and I started thinking about choreographing my own stuff, and that was new for me, you know?”

“That sounds awesome.”

“Yeah…it was. Plus,” Maggie added with a grin, “it was where I met the first person I knew who was gay and out. Don’t think my parents really counted on that…”

Alex grinned back at Maggie before remembering what had happened. “I’m sorry.”

Maggie’s throat bobbed as she swallowed, her features hardening slightly. “Don’t be. I—I’m happy with who I am. Who I became.”

“You should be. You’re”—Alex hesitated, too many thoughts swirling around her head as she tried to find one word that could possibly be enough—“amazing.”

“Mm, yes, well, I’ve come a long way since the little pink tutus.”

“That’s not what I meant. Or, you know, not the only thing I meant.”

Maggie’s shoulders lifted and fell as her gaze dropped to the floor.

“I just…you’ve done so much for me. And today… Today was…”

“It was just free food and a dry shirt.”

“No, it wasn’t. You’ve taken all the time you’re not teaching lessons to help me. You drove me all the way down to the lake to help me feel comfortable with a jump. You cared enough to notice more than _what_ I wasn’t getting right, but _why_ I wasn’t getting things right.”

“I teach dance. It’s what I’m supposed to notice.”

“No! It’s not…it’s so much more than that. It’s—it’s you, Maggie.”

When Maggie glanced up at Alex, her brown eyes sparkling, Alex thought she looked younger than she’d ever seen her, maybe a little vulnerable, like maybe she wasn’t used to people noticing how much she did. And gorgeous. God, she was so fucking gorgeous. And then Alex stopped thinking and did the one thing that felt right. She leaned forward and let her lips find Maggie’s like she’d wanted to do since the first night they danced together.

And, oh, it was everything she’d hoped it would be and more. Maggie’s lips were soft and pliant, parting slightly as Alex’s tongue traced along them. As Alex reached out a tentative hand to cup Maggie’s jaw, she found herself suddenly caressing the air as Maggie seemed to fly backwards.

“Wha—”

“We can’t!” Maggie was breathless, her words coming out in a jumbled mess. “I—no—you should go home.”

“Maggie, I don’t—”

“Just go home, Alex!” And even though Maggie still sounded frantic, still looked frazzled and scared, there was something hard beneath the words that cut Alex to the core. So with a small nod of her head, Alex stuffed her hands into her pockets and left, half-jogging back to the cabins and hoping she’d make it back before she did something humiliating like cry.

By the time she made it to the door, her whole body—once warm in Maggie’s clothes and buzzing with desire—felt cold and clammy. She managed to quiet her emotions enough to let herself into the cabin in silence, tip-toeing back to her room and only letting out a sigh of relief as she shut the door behind her, her forehead falling against it with a quiet _thump_.

“Where have you been? I want the truth this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...you all know I'm a sucker for a happy ending, and we'll be at the end within 48 hours soooo don't worry too much?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phewww and we're almost at the end now! Thanks again for the comments! Finally had time to respond to some of them and will make it to the rest at some point soon enough

“Kara?” Alex fought to keep her voice quiet, quelling the urge to panic and bolt right back into the night air, flee whatever tortures the universe seemed intent on making her face.

Kara’s voice was pinched tight, and Alex thought it looked like maybe she’d been crying, but it was too dark to tell for sure.

“I don’t know—”

“Alex, I saw James tonight. I know you weren’t with him.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“How would you even know what I think? You don’t talk to me! How should I have any idea what to think?”

“Kara.” And Alex wanted to say more, to explain, to apologize, to push back and insist that Kara didn’t need to know everything, but that thought brought her back to memories of dinner with Maggie and the kiss, and before Alex knew it she was crying. Not a stray tear or two, but full on sobbing, her voice choked with emotion, her features distorted with the intensity of all the things she didn’t know how to feel, how to deal with, forcing themselves out the only way they knew how.

“Oh, Alex.” In an instant, Kara was on her feet, wrapping Alex in her arms. And when had she gotten to be the taller one? But it didn’t matter because she was leading Alex back to her bed and sitting her down and draping a blanket around her body, which she only then realized was shaking. Then Kara’s arms were around her, and she knew this wasn’t how it was supposed to be—she was the older sister; she was supposed to take care of Kara, not the other way around—but she let her head drop to Kara’s shoulders as she soaked up as much comfort as she could.

“I’m sorry. I’m—I’m sorry,” Alex managed through sobs that wracked her whole body.

“Shh, no, no, you’re okay. You’re okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

And Alex didn’t really think it was, but for the night, she let herself pretend like maybe it would. She let Kara whisper all those naïve promises to her and hand her tissues and crawl into the cramped twin bed beside her and hold her until exhaustion won out and she finally fell asleep.

\---

Alex woke the following morning to the sight of Kara trying to arrange three full plates of food on a nightstand not nearly large enough to accommodate all of them.

“Kara?” Her throat hurt, and her voice came out raspy and thick with sleep.

“Shoot, did I wake you?”

“No, I…what time is it?”

“Um, like 10-ish? I brought you breakfast.”

“Fuck,” Alex muttered, rubbing at her eyes. “Mom and Dad are—”

“I told them that we stayed up late last night talking. They’re out all day with some of Jeremiah’s work friends.”

“Thanks.” The reality of last night hit Alex, and she found that the patterned quilt on her bed was suddenly intensely interesting.

“Do you, um…I just…I’m here. If you want to talk.”

“I—I don’t—I mean—I just—” Alex’s breath came in shorter and shorter gasps.

“Hey, it’s okay! Sorry, I don’t mean, or, I didn’t… James said I should talk to you, that’s all.”

“Why?” Alex’s voice cracked on the word. “Why would he say that?”

Kara shrugged, her eyes downcast. “I, um, my night didn’t go too well either.”

Alex shot out of bed at that. “What’d Mike do to you? I’ll kill him.”

“No! There’s no need for anything like that.” But Alex caught the hint of a smile on Kara’s lips. “I just, it was pretty clear that what he wanted from me wasn’t something I was willing to do, and once he realized…” Kara gave a shrug of her shoulders, pulling at the hem of her shirt. “He didn’t really want anything to do with me. Told me I should go home. I, uh, I’m sorry. For not believing you about him the first time.”

Relief that Kara had held her own and anger at Mike and the desire to protect Kara better all welled up inside of Alex, jostling for dominance as she pulled Kara into her arms. “If you change your mind, you just say the word, okay?”

Kara snorted as she shook her head. “It’s okay.”

“Are _you_ okay, though?” Alex pulled back, holding Kara out at arm’s length to inspect her.

“I’m okay. I was upset, but then I went for a walk. Cause, you know, I thought you were out with James, so then I couldn’t go home.” Alex winced at the reminder, waving away Kara’s concern. “Well, then I ran into James on his way back from another one of his private lessons.”

“Right…”

“Yeah. And so I assumed it was you, but he didn’t get what I was talking about. So then I was mad, but he told me I should really talk to you before I decided I was angry with you.” Alex swallowed hard, the knowledge of what she’d sort of intended to tell Kara, though not necessarily this soon, sitting heavy in her gut.

“What’d you do for the rest of the night? Were you stuck waiting around for me for a while?”

Kara shook her head. “James noticed that I’d been crying, so he asked if I wanted to talk, and, I don’t know. We went for a walk together. And talked a lot. He’s really sweet, Alex.”

Alex had to agree, even if she had clear preferences between him and his dance partner.

“But, um, did you…do you want to talk?”

“Kara,” Alex sighed, taking a deep breath and steeling her resolve. “I…you know how we went to dance class with Maggie?”

“Um, yeah?”

“Nevermind, no, that’s not the right place to start.” Alex shook her head, running her hands through her hair. “I, um, I am taking dance lessons.”

“Uh, okay.”

“But it’s for a performance.”

Kara narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“This isn’t making sense.” Alex let out a groan as she began pacing across the small room, past the beds and to the closet (oh, wasn’t that ironic, she thought on her third pass), then back to the nightstand again. “Okay, um, I went to this party our first night here.”

“Why didn’t you take me?”

“I didn’t know I was going to a party. I just needed to get away from Max.”

“You really don’t like him, huh?”

“You don’t even know the half of it.” Alex couldn’t help a little laugh. “Anyway, I ran into Winn, and he took me up there after some convincing. And it was a staff-only party, and they all seemed really cool. Then James and Maggie showed up, and they were dancing, and oh my gosh, Kara, when they’re not dancing the way they have to for Collin, they’re even more amazing! Seriously, you have to see it sometime.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Yeah, and so, um, I ended up dancing.”

“You?” Kara asked, her voice tinged with incredulity.

“Whatever. Yes, I danced. With James. And, uh, then with Maggie.” Kara nodded, not even pausing over the detail. “And, um, it was nice. Dancing with Maggie, I mean.”

“She’s such a good dancer!”

“Right…” Alex paused, trying to figure out how to get her meaning across. “She is a good dancer. But I mean, I really liked dancing _with her_.”

“Okay?”

“No, like, with her, like, being close to her. Like, you know, close enough to tell how pretty she is.”

“She is pretty.”

Alex clenched her hands into fists before letting them go loose again. “No, Kara. I mean, close enough for her to kiss me.”

“I don’t—”

“She did kiss me, Kara.”

“Oh.”

“And I—that’s not something—I wasn’t opposed to it. I…I maybe would want something like that to happen again.”

“Oh.” They sank into silence for a moment. “Are you…coming out to me?”

Fighting back the urge to deny everything, Alex stumbled over her words. “I don’t, um, yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Are you…gay?”

“Don’t say it like that!” Alex snapped, her heart thundering in her chest and her legs tensed as she debated whether it’d be better to bolt now or in 30 seconds.

“Say it how?”

“Like…like you can barely even say the word. Like it’s such a bad thing.”

“Alex, I’m not. I swear, I’m not.”

And somehow that was almost harder to hear, and goddam, Alex swore she should really be out of tears at that point, but there they were again, welling up and making her throat tight. “You don’t—you don’t hate me now?”

“No! Alex, I would never.” Kara reached out a hand, grasping Alex’s in her own. “I’m still friends with Adam, remember?”

“Who?”

“He transferred to our school during your senior year. I took him to prom.”

“Oh, right.” Alex remembered Eliza mentioning something about him over the phone, though she didn’t really see why he mattered. “What about him?”

“I mean, well, he’s gay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Not totally out to everyone, but he told me after he got back from his summer vacation with his mom.”

“Oh.”

“And I’m not, it doesn’t have to be the same or whatever. But it’s not like…I don’t think you’re the only one or something.”

“Yeah…I, uh, Maggie is too.”

“Yeah?” Kara wiggled her eyebrows and grinned broadly. “Soooo she kissed you, _and_?”

And Alex hated and loved it. Because there was Kara proving that she could be fine with it and supportive and still be her nosy little sister who wanted to know things the second they happened. But it was too late because Maggie pushed her away. Maggie didn’t want her. Not like that. Not anymore.

“What’s wrong?”

“She doesn’t—she didn’t—”

“Hey, what happened?”

Alex sniffled, wiping her tears away with what she only belatedly realized was still Maggie’s sweatshirt. “She, um, she’s been doing dance lessons with me and James. And so we’ve, you know, gotten close. And I came out to her or whatever.”

“Well, duh, she kissed you.”

Alex felt her cheeks warm. “Um, I actually, er, that was kind of a misunderstanding. Or not really, I guess. I don’t know. I pushed her away that night. And then she thought I was straight. And then I had to explain again later that I was just, you know, kind of scared and new to this or whatever.”

“Ohh, okay.”

“But we’ve gotten closer. And yesterday she took me to the lake, and then we had dinner, and we were talking, and she was just”—Alex swallowed heavily as she let her thoughts drift back to the day before—“so beautiful. And then I kissed her. But she—she pushed me away. Told me to leave.”

“Oh, Alex. Maybe it’s not what you think.”

Fixing Kara with a stern glare, Alex crossed her arms over her chest. “What else could that possibly mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe…not right then?”

“She clearly doesn’t like me.”

“She’d be crazy not to.”

Alex shrugged, too tired to go through all the ways she could be thoroughly unlikeable. “And now I have to go see her in an hour for dance lessons, and I don’t want to go.”

“You can skip a day. It’s not like school.”

“It’s a long story, but I really can’t skip. Tomorrow I’m performing with James. In front of people.”

“What? Why? Where?”

“I don’t know, some fancy country club kind of place not that far from here.”

“But why?”

“Maggie has to be in San Francisco tomorrow and won’t be back in time.”

“Why?” Kara repeated.

“It’s, uh, she was at a protest like a week ago, and they got arrested. So now she has to show up in court. And so I’m filling in for her.”

“But couldn’t—”

“Nope.” Alex held up a hand. “Already asked. Trust me.”

“Well then I’ll come with you to your dance lesson.”

“You don’t have to, really.”

“Hey, you punched Mike in the face for me. The least I can do is hang out with you and keep things from getting awkward.”

Part of Alex wanted to insist that she was a big girl who would be fine. But another part of her had no desire to come face-to-face with Maggie and potentially have to talk about the night before, and having Kara with her seemed like a good way to keep that from happening. Which was how, one very long, very hot shower later, Alex trudged across the grounds, Kara at her side, insisting that Kara could take no photos and was never allowed to make fun of her for the dancing if she was bad.

As it turned out, Maggie didn’t show up at all.

She didn’t show up that evening either.

The following morning, Alex found a bag with the outfit she would wear for the performance that night waiting for her, but no sign of Maggie.

Alex didn’t know whether to be grateful or annoyed.

The show with James was fine. The spins went well, and after a few nervous, off steps during the first bars of music, Alex was able to forget about the people lined up to watch them. They didn’t attempt the lift, having decided the day before to turn it into a dip that still got an _ooh_ out of the crowd. And it was all fine. There was no heart in it, but then again, Alex figured, she should never have hoped for that much from it.

The following few days passed in a haze. Maggie didn’t try to see Alex, and Alex made no attempt at finding her. There was no reason to humiliate herself further. She hung out with Kara or drifted down to spend time alone at the lake during the day, and shrugged off Max’s offers to see her at night. She stood between Kara and Mike the one time he tried to swagger back with easy lies and insincere apologies on his lips. She let herself be dragged to some social event with her parents once, only to find herself left with Max, as if they were doing her a favor by making the time for her to see him. But most of all, she drifted. The days passed. They made it past the halfway point in their time there. And everything was _fine_.

It wasn’t until the next Friday that Alex found herself back by the staff cabins for the first time since she’d performed with James. Apparently Kara had gotten close with James since then, and she insisted that Maggie wasn’t going to be there but that Alex should come, have some real fun for a change. So Alex let herself be dragged down there and drank the cheap beer and tried not to roll her eyes too hard at the way Kara and James both made moony eyes at each other the second the other one wasn’t paying attention.

“Haven’t seen you around lately.”

Alex looked up, blinking slowly in the dim lighting as she made out Winn’s messy hair. “Yeah. Guess not.”

“You okay? You don’t sound great.”

“Fine.”

“Um, okay, well I’m here if you ever want to talk.”

“Why? You wanna tell me to come out and then avoid me forever?”

“Wait, what? Hold on.” Winn shook his head, glancing at the music still thumping from inside the cabin. “How about a walk?”

“But my sister—”

“Is fine. Trust me. James isn’t gonna let anything happen to her. It’s not like they’re leaving each other’s sides.”

Alex narrowed her eyes at the tone. Was that…jealousy? “Do you…?”

“We’re talking about you right now, alright.”

“Fine,” Alex huffed, insisting on leading the way even though the walk had been Winn’s idea.

Once they got far enough away from the staff cabins that the music had faded, Winn cleared his throat. “Want to tell me what happened between you and Maggie?”

“What’d she tell you?”

“Nothing. In fact, she’s really not talking to anyone these days.”

“Not like she’s the one who got shot down.”

“So you…?”

“I, you know, like you suggested, I came out to her.”

“Congratulations!”

And Alex wanted to tell Winn to fuck off, but his smile was too damn genuine, so instead she ignored it. “And we kept hanging out. And then she took me the lake and got me dinner and gave me a dry sweatshirt, and I—I kissed her.” Alex swore she heard a half-swallowed squeal before she continued. “It seemed like she was into it, and I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t already kissed me at the first dance when I freaked out, but then she pushed me away and told me I had to leave. And now, well, I guess you already know, she won’t look at me or talk to me or anything.”

“I…” Winn stopped, pulling his lower lip between his teeth. “It’s probably not my place to say.”

“When has that ever stopped you before?”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Sure, Schott.”

“Hey, there’s a difference between gossip and real secrets.”

“Okay, okay.”

“But I don’t want you walking around with such a bad opinion of Maggie when, okay, maybe she’s kind of being not the best right now, but she has reasons, you know?”

“No, I really don’t! I don’t know what I did wrong. I don’t know how I fucked things up.”

“It’s not a you-specific thing.”

“Then what _is_ it?”

“Ugh, remember what I told you back before you started the lessons?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. You talk a lot sometimes.”

“You know I’m trying to help you, right?”

“Fine.” The word stretched into several syllables.

“Just about how Maggie doesn’t want to feel used.”

“Oh, yeah. Something about me being a rich girl just wanting to experiment.”

“Not you specifically, but that idea, yeah.”

“And? I’m clearly not. I came out. Even to Kara.”

“Really?” Winn’s face lit up, and he looked ready to pull Alex into a big hug before thinking better of it. “That’s awesome.”

“Yeah, well, it sort of—whatever, it doesn’t matter.”

“Does Maggie know?”

“What?”

“That you told Kara.”

“No.”

“So then maybe she still isn’t sure.”

“Bullshit.” Alex stopped dead, her arms folded over her chest. “I literally told her in person all fucking nervous. Why would I go through all that if I were straight?”

Winn shrugged. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t be the first. Or at least not the first to act like they were open to something only to shut it down when the summer was over.”

“But I’m not—that’s not me.”

“I believe you, but it doesn’t make it any easier to trust someone when you’ve been burned before.”

“What happened?”

“Um, I mean, I guess, ugh, if Maggie kills me, my blood is on your hands.”

“That would require Maggie talking to me long enough to find out that I know anything.”

“Look, there was this guest. Eliza. Two, three years back. She found out Maggie was a lesbian and started flirting with her—showing up to all her classes, asking for private lessons, the works. And Maggie’s a professional, but it seemed genuine, so after a little while, they started kinda seeing each other.” Alex tamped down on the sudden surge of jealousy. It wasn’t like she had any claim over Maggie. “And by the end, Maggie really, really liked this girl.” Anger roiled in Alex’s gut as she guessed what might have happened next. “End of the summer comes, and Maggie says something about keeping things going, but Eliza shoots her down. Says it wasn’t real, like it was all some big summer experiment but she has a boyfriend back home, stuff like that. And Maggie’s always been a little hard to read, but then she kind of shut down. Didn’t like interacting with the guests as much except when she had to.” Winn tilted his head to the side as he considered his words. “You’re the first one she’s seen regularly since then.”

“So what? She thinks I’m gonna do the same thing?”

“I don’t know what she thinks. But it’s hard to trust people after something like that.”

Alex nodded slowly, sinking down to sit on the grass as she tried to parse through all the new information. A few minutes later, Winn sat down next to her.

“So…you kissed her?”

“Shut it, Schott.”

“Come on, I’m totally claiming credit for this.”

“You thought I liked James!”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Apparently not you!”

Alex grinned at the slight pink flush creeping across Winn’s cheeks.

“Whatever. We’re not talking about me right now.”

“We could be, though.”

“You’re just trying to get out talking about how into Maggie you are.”

“Am not.”

“Please, those dimples dragged you out of the closet. You are _so_ into her.”

“It’s not like it matters.” Alex dug at the grass with the tip of her shoes. “She’s not into me.”

“You know, if you were really into her, I might be able to help. But I guess since you’re not…” Winn trailed off, dramatically pushing himself up into a standing position and turning to walk away until Alex caught him by the ankles, bringing him tumbling down to the ground. “Hey! I need my feet working to serve dinner.”

“Sorry!”

“Nah, I’m just kidding. I’m fine.”

“You suck.”

“Maybe so, but you’re the one that wants me to stay so badly.”

“Ugh, fine, I really like her, okay?”

“I knew it!” Winn grinned triumphantly. “Okay, so what you need to do is show her that, make her see that even after she totally pushed you away and showed you what might seem like a bad side or whatever, you’re still there fighting for her. Tell her you told Kara. Tell her you still like her. Tell her the truth.”

Alex grimaced at Winn’s growing enthusiasm. “That sounds unpleasant.”

“But think about how great it could be to get to kiss her again.”

“That’s a compelling argument…” Alex held up a finger. “I’m not saying I’m doing it. I’m saying I’ll think about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter doesn't have a scene a lot of you were hoping for, but narrative wise it felt right to make tomorrow's chapter the longer one, so I'll see you in 24 hours with that!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't want any spoilers, scroll down to the chapter start! If you think you might need some advance notice about things, feel free to read the author's notes below:
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: Heads up on some homophobia. The chapter obviously makes the most sense if you read the whole thing, but if you don’t want to deal with any of the more negative bits, you can skip the middle 3 sections of this chapter (they’re separated by ---). Also, for those of you who might be Jeremiah stans (idk maybe you exist??) at least the way he was written in the show, I couldn’t stand the man and didn’t find anything endearing in the whole, “I guess no man was good enough for my daughter” line (and here everyone’s transposed back to an earlier historical moment too), so if you want your Jeremiah as unproblematic as Alex’s memories of him, feel free to skip the fourth section.

As it turned out, thinking about it meant getting more and more fixated on the idea of it. And that meant extensively planning exactly how she would go about showing Maggie that she was serious. Which ended up meaning telling Kara and getting advice about over-the-top romantic gestures that Alex rejected out of hand, but also getting the romantic encouragement she needed to finally show up at Maggie’s cabin on a morning that James happened to let slip she’d be there.

Alex walked up to the cabin, then ran away, then went back again three full times before finally knocking, her palms already sweaty and her mouth dry.

After a few seconds that stretched on for an eternity, the door opened. Maggie looked tired. Gorgeous, of course, but exhausted. Like maybe she’d been having just as much trouble sleeping as Alex had.

“What are you doing here?”

“I had something to tell you.”

“Well then spit it out.”

“I…can I come inside?”

“Uh, I guess.” Maggie stepped backwards, looking more tentative than Alex had ever seen her. Once they were inside, Maggie wrapped her arms protectively around herself. “What do you need, Alex?”

“I needed you to know that I—I like you. I’m gay, and I like you. And I told my sister, and she thinks I should make some grand romantic gesture to show you how much I like you, but I kind of think kissing you already was one of those, and it didn’t go so well, and I’m not entirely convinced you like me at all, but I figured, well, I already did the whole kiss a girl and then run away and pretend it never happened thing, and that didn’t make me any happier.” Alex took a gulping breath after what she suspected had turned into a rather long, rambling sentence. “But you…I actually like you, Maggie. And if you don’t like me, I’ll turn around and go home and stop bothering you. But if you just wanted proof that I—that I’m not just using you. Well…here it is.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why”—Maggie shook her head, looking up to the ceiling as her mouth opened and shut a few times—“why any of this?”

“Because I don’t want to give up without putting all my cards on the table. And maybe I’m mixing metaphors, I don’t know. English was never really my best subject. But I thought you deserved all the facts before making a decision.”

“But why—why me? I’m sure there are plenty of gay girls at Stanford that would love to have you, and that’s just, it’s easier, okay? It’s better.”

“Maybe it’s easier, but it’s not better. I don’t like them, Maggie. None of them ever made me think that coming out was worth the risk. None of them ever made me feel this…alive. But you—you do. And giving up on that without trying? That sounds like something I’d always regret.”

“This is a bad idea,” Maggie whispered as she stepped forward.

“It doesn’t have to be.” Alex inched forward.

“It could be.” They were only a hair’s breadth away from one another.

Alex tilted her head to the side. “I think you’re worth the risk.”

And then they were kissing, and Alex decided that even if it was more tentative than the last time, it was her new favorite kiss. Because this time when she brought her hand up, Maggie didn’t jump back. And this time Maggie reached her arms out and brought Alex in even closer. And this time when Maggie did pull away, it was only to rest her forehead against Alex’s and catch her breath before leaning forward once more.

Eventually, though, reality crashed back down around them in the form of bells sounding from the campgrounds, indicating the end of another activity block.

“I’ve gotta go. Time to teach a bunch of yuppies how to do a basic ballroom dance for their next wedding reception.”

Alex decided that even if they hadn’t taken their hands off each other for the past however long it had been—time really didn’t seem to be working in its normal way any more—she wasn’t ready to be apart from Maggie yet. “Can I walk you there?”

“I would love it.” Alex beamed and tangled her fingers together with Maggie’s. “But I can’t.”

“Oh. Um, right, yeah, of course.” Alex yanked her hand back like it’d been burned.

“No, Alex, it’s not like that. We’re not allowed to date the guests.”

“But Mike and—”

“They’re waitstaff. The college boys. The ones that’ll end up bringing their wives and kids here one day.”

Alex flashed back to Collin’s talk to the waiters she’d overheard her first few days there. “Right.”

“And, well, I don’t think even the waitstaff guys would be allowed to go hand-in-hand with another boy.”

“Right.”

“Hey, look, we can still see each other. We just need to be quiet about it.”

“Yeah, no, I get it. I guess…I just thought…I got excited, you know? And Kara and Winn and James are all so good about things.”

“I know,” Maggie whispered. “But right here, right now? It’s just us.” She reached out, clasping Alex’s hands in her own. “And I promise I’m being more honest and more myself with you here than I ever am out there.”

“I get that.”

With one last kiss goodbye, Maggie headed off to her lessons, while Alex bolted back to the cabin, hoping Kara would be there alone so that she could tell her all the good news.

\---

The next week passed in a haze of blissful hours spent tucked away in Maggie’s room and late evenings spent down by the dock and even a few sanctioned hours spent in private dance lessons as Maggie led Alex around the room until hands inevitably began to wander and they ended up scurrying back to the staff cabins and trying to keep out of sight from anyone else. Between languorous kisses, stretched out along Maggie’s cot, they learned more about each other—from the things that made them smile to the touches that made them moan, their hopes and dreams examined with as much excitement as their warm bodies, bared to one another in the twilight hours after Maggie’s lessons ended and before Alex had to show up for family dinner.

Alex should have known that happiness as exquisite as that couldn’t last. Surely there was some principle, some universal law that said that the pendulum would swing back with just as much force, knocking her and Maggie on their asses as soon as they settled into their own, covert version of bliss.

That pendulum swing came in the form of Collin approaching their table at lunch one day with an overly smug-looking Max by his side and informing Jeremiah and Eliza that their daughter had let herself be caught up in a certain “lifestyle” with one of the dancers. “We’ve taken care of that problem, but I thought you might want to know to keep an eye on your family.”

“You can’t fire her!” Alex spat, standing up so fast her chair toppled over, clattering to the floor with a loud noise that echoed through the dining hall.

“Don’t make a scene, Alexandra,” Eliza hissed, her eyes wide as she glanced around. “Your father’s colleagues are here.”

Ignoring her mom, Alex turned back to Collin. “She didn’t do anything wrong!”

“If you watched the news, you might realize just how many people would disagree with that statement.”

Alex felt her stomach roil and her cheeks burn with embarrassment, but she nudged Kara back down into her seat when she moved to stand up too. “It’s not,” Alex began, her voice wavering, but she found she didn’t have the words to finish her thought, opting instead to make a run for it, intent on warning Maggie before Collin found her.

As Alex ran, her shoes squelching in the grass that was still wet from an earlier shower, she tried to ward off the sense of despair she could feel creeping into her clothes, seeping somewhere deep inside of her. But if she could just get to Maggie, it would be okay. It had to be okay. Maggie had been doing this for so long now. She’d know what to do. Together. Together it would be fine.

Alex didn’t bother knocking, crashing through the front door and bounding into Maggie’s room, calling out in a hoarse voice: “Maggie! Maggie, quick!”

But there was no answer.

Alex looked around the little space that had been their sanctuary from the world during the time they had together. Gone was the row of shoes that had lined the wall by the door with the little spot for Alex’s Converse that had been added in over the days. Gone was the black notebook plastered with a large Silence=Death sticker that had served as half-diary, half-choreography planning notebook. Gone were the sheets and blankets that had gotten tangled around them as they learned the contours of one another’s bodies, only to be pulled back up and wrapped tight around them as they held each other close. All of it, gone.

\---

Later that day, James and Kara found Alex curled up and crying on Maggie’s stripped cot.

“Hey,” Kara whispered, settling herself down beside Alex while James waited several paces back.

“I fucked it up. I should’ve—should’ve just let her go,” Alex hiccupped.

“She knows this wasn’t your fault,” James interjected.

“It was Max and Mike. I didn’t—I’m sorry, Alex. I should have realized that Mike was mean enough to try to get back at you and me any way he could.”

“But I—I’m the one that made her do this. I’m the reason she’s fired.”

“You didn’t,” Kara whispered over and over as she rubbed Alex’s back.

“Collin’s always had it out for the entertainment staff. What he did to Maggie was awful, but she’s got connections, I promise. And she’s got her people here still—we’ll help her, make sure she lands on her feet.”

Alex could only nod and hope that what James was saying was true.

\---

The walk back to the cabin felt torturously long, and Alex swore she was getting stares the whole way there. It was only Kara’s solid presence beside her that kept Alex from heading back to the staff cabins and crashing on Maggie’s cold, bare bed until she could sneak into her room, grab her stuff, and find her own way out of there.

Her parents were both sitting in the front room when they got back, and Alex felt panic clawing at her before they’d even said a word.

“Collin told me that you never paid for private lessons with James. Is that true?”

Her dad’s voice was harsher than she’d ever heard it—at least directed at her. “I—I did get lessons.”

“They’re not on the record anywhere.”

“She did get lessons, I saw her!” Kara jumped in, her voice earnest and her hand on Alex’s back steadying.

“Kara, go to your room.”

“But—”

“Now, Kara,” Jeremiah ordered. Once she was gone, he turned his attention back to Alex. “I don’t know what ideas that woman was putting into your head, but—”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Stop. I already know that it happened before with another guest a couple of years ago. I’m willing to forgive the lying if you pay back the money or document it as a theft with Collin.”

“She didn’t steal any money from me! And I did get lessons!”

“I think you need time to get yourself in order, Alex.”

“I’m not—this isn’t—I don’t get what you think Maggie did.”

“That woman has put all sorts of ideas into your head! You were off with her while we were paying for you to enjoy all the activities this retreat has to offer. Do you know how many members of the staff were talking about you? How many of them saw you two doing things that no father should ever have to worry about his child doing?”

Alex felt her stomach lurch at just how far Mike and Max had taken their plot. “She didn’t do anything to me. I—that’s me, Dad.”

“You’re confused. You’ve never made any suggestion about these sorts of things before.”

“Because I was scared!” Alex snapped. “And you—you are the one who always taught me to be brave. And Maggie…she just helped me to finally be brave. To be honest. Because I—I’m—I’m gay.”

“Go to your room, Alexandra.”

Alex recoiled at the coldness in her father’s tone, swallowing back tears until she was safely behind the door of her room, her face buried in pillows and a blanket thrown over her head to muffle any sounds. She shrugged off Kara’s attempts at comfort, not fully relaxing until she heard the front door shut as the rest of the family left for dinner. Apparently keeping up appearances without their “problem” daughter was still important.

It was then that Alex let herself cry in earnest, sitting alone in the shower as hot water streamed down around her, washing away the tears as fast as they fell.

Alex wasn’t sure how long it had been, though the water had started to run cold a while ago, when she finally pulled herself out of the shower, throwing on the softest pair of sweatpants she owned and Maggie’s sweatshirt, which she still hadn’t gotten around to returning (mainly because she hadn’t really wanted to give away the soft reminder of Maggie that got to come home with her each night when they parted).

After a little while, a knock sounded at the bedroom door.

“It’s open, Kara,” Alex called out, her voice hoarse.

“It’s not Kara,” Eliza said as she slipped inside, a plate of food, including a slice of Alex’s favorite cake, in hand. “I thought it might be good for you to eat something, even if you don’t much feel like it.”

“This how you’re gonna feed me for the rest of the week? Make sure I can’t embarrass Dad in front of all his work friends?”

Eliza pursed her lips, ducking her head down. “You’re not an embarrassment, Alex. I didn’t want you to do something rash, but you— _you_ could never be an embarrassment to me.”

“But what?”

“There is no but.” Alex swallowed heavily, shifting over as Eliza settled down on the edge of the mattress beside her. “Did you mean what you said earlier?”

“Yeah,” Alex mumbled, her eyes downcast as she picked at the threads of her quilt. “Or did you wanna tell me how confused I am first?”

“No, I wanted to tell you that I was proud of you.”

Alex jerked her head up. “What?”

“You were right. It does take bravery—more than it should. I’m sorry that you felt like you had to be scared of telling us for so long.”

“I…um, so I’m not, you’re not, I don’t know, ashamed of me?”

“No, Alex, never.”

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I was surprised, I’ll be honest. And I wish I could tell you that my first reaction had been better, but I know how hard this world can be, and I want you to have all the opportunities and successes you deserve.” Eliza reached out a hand, settling it on Alex’s knee. “But success isn’t enough if you aren’t happy.”

Alex sniffled and scooted a few millimeters closer to her mom.

“This Maggie…does she make you happy?”

Alex nodded.

“Do you know where she is? Kara mentioned you didn’t get to see her before she left.”

“No,” Alex managed, her voice catching.

“Do you know where her parents live? Maybe we could try to find a phone book. You could at least talk to her.”

“They kicked her out years ago.”

Eliza’s features hardened, her jaw clenching, before she forced herself to look calm. “Does Maggie have somewhere else to go, another job lined up?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

And Alex wanted to point out that it probably wasn’t much—not when they had no phone number or address or way of changing Collin’s mind—but she bit her tongue. “Okay.”

“Now eat something. We don’t need you wasting away.”

\---

The next few days felt like torture. Alex only left the house a handful of times, and for most meals, Kara snuck her back food, sometimes with Eliza’s guiding hand in adding vegetables to the plate. She spent hours holed up in her room listening to her Discman and trying to bury herself in the textbooks she’d lugged out with her. Every so often she caught snippets of arguments between her parents echoing from down the hallway, but they made her feel even guiltier, so she’d turn up her music and pull the blankets closer around herself.

Finally, on their last full day at Kellerman’s, Jeremiah showed up in Alex’s doorway. “We’re all going down to the final dinner and show. It would be good if you joined us.” A sharp noise from Eliza was enough for Jeremiah to amend his statement. “We’d _like_ you to join us.”

“Fine.” There was no use in acting enthusiastic, but she didn’t feel like dealing with whatever blowback there would be from refusing—not when she was so close to being done with this summer, done with Kellerman’s, done with spending all her time with her family and these weirdos who chose to spend their vacation holed up at some adult summer camp.

Once they were seated Alex shoved her chair as far back into the corner as it would go. If her father didn’t want people seeing her, she’d make it clear that she didn’t want to be there just as much as they didn’t want her there.

She listened as Collin yammered on and on about how successful the summer had been and the number of new and returning families who’d come and a bunch of bullshit that Alex couldn’t care less about. Then there was some art display he was gesturing towards—perhaps that’s what those people were doing all summer at the crafts tables—and a talent show for everyone to show off what they’d learned—Alex’s assessment was: not much. She tried to keep the scoffing to a minimum after getting a sharp glare for one particularly audible noise, though.

“And now, for our last guest performance…” The words were enough to get Alex through it.

Of course, then there was still the final staff dance that wouldn’t be complete without one of their two lead dancers, but Alex tried not to dwell. It only made her angry. So as the room quieted down for it, Alex turned her attention to methodically destroying the paper napkin at her place until a little squeal from Kara made her look up. And there was Maggie looking absolutely radiant in a black blazer and white button up, her hair falling in soft waves down her shoulders.

“Nobody puts the leading lady in the corner.” Maggie reached out a hand, a smile curling up the corners of her mouth. “Alex Danvers, may I have this dance? I suspect they might need someone to show them how it’s done.”

“I…” Alex froze until Kara kicked her shins and Eliza nudged her forward with a quiet, “Well, go on then.”

And then Alex was being led to the front of the room as opening notes that had become so familiar over the weeks began to play. She wondered how in the world they were getting away with it until she caught sight of Winn gesturing wildly as he led Collin back to the kitchens.

“Ready to show ’em what we’ve got?” Maggie whispered, her hand soft and warm in Alex’s own.

“How…?”

But then Maggie was stepping forward, and Alex let herself be swept into the version of the dance they’d worked on in the few hours they managed to spend dancing even though the temptation of kissing in Maggie’s bed was still so strong.

Alex had caught sight of a few scandalized faces when Maggie was leading her up to the front of the room, but after the first dip, she heard a chorus of _ooh_ , and by the time she had launched herself into Maggie’s arms to be spun around, loud whistles and cheers from the staff and some of the younger guests were enough to drown out the judgmental mutterings of the rest.

As their song transitioned into the next, more of the entertainment staff trickled out, partnering up and joining them on the makeshift dance floor. Alex grinned at the sight of James extending a hand to Kara back at their table.

Once the crowd’s attention shifted away from them, Alex turned to Maggie. “How…? You’re here!”

“I am here.”

“How?”

“I’m not back for long.”

“Oh.” Alex felt her heart sink. “So you didn’t get your job back?”

“No,” Maggie hedged, “but I got another job offer.”

“What?”

“You really don’t know?” Maggie tilted her head to the side as Alex shook her head. “A Mr. John Jones…he’s got ties to a gay-friendly youth center, said they need someone to work on community engagement and help run some of their dance classes.”

“Wait…John? My parents’ friend John?”

Maggie shrugged. “He said the offer wasn’t contingent on anything but an interview. He seemed to know a lot about me, and I checked it out: the place is real and doing very cool work.”

“That’s amazing!” Alex gushed, pulling Maggie closer to her as they shifted from dancing into more of a swaying hug.

“Yeah, it really is. So…thank you. I don’t know what you did, but thank you.”

“I…really, it wasn’t me. You’re an amazing teacher. You deserve it more than anyone, Maggie. No matter what, you deserve that job.”

“And, well, it’s in San Francisco.” Maggie looked up at Alex, a small smiling playing about her lips as she joined their hands together between them. “So if you ever wanted to see me, I hear it’s not too far from Stanford…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for following with me this week and hope you enjoyed this final chapter! I've now entered my personal week from hell, so if you want to drop a line in the comments, it'd be much appreciated, even if it'll take me a while to get back to them! 
> 
> And a very happy birthday week to @MissDancer208!


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